


Opportunities

by OneMoreAltmer



Series: Oblivion: Taviverse [4]
Category: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Multi, Oral Sex, Piracy, Theft, Threesome - F/M/M, Vaginal Sex, Whipping, bad childhood, mother/daughter rivalry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-14 18:32:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 52,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14774949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneMoreAltmer/pseuds/OneMoreAltmer
Summary: Luminara is an Imperial City girl with a history of bad luck and a dream of becoming the best thief who ever lived. First, though, she'll have to learn to sort out her feelings, get out from under the loan shark her father died owing money, and decide what to do with these pirates she keeps acquiring.Set in the same universe as Apotheosis but is a stand-alone.





	1. But It's All Right

According to the classic story _Purloined Shadows_ , there was once a thief so clever he managed to steal from the Daedric Lord Nocturnal herself.  He was also so secretive that no one ever learned his name:  he was only the Master of Stealth.  A street thief with a lust for adventure once convinced him to take her on as an apprentice, and she was there for the theft of the magical cowl.  She had sneaked closer than any human had ever been to Nocturnal in the flesh before she realized that her master was only using her as a distraction.

When I was seven, I got my hands on a copy of _Purloined Shadows._   Never mind how.  It was the one possession I carried everywhere, and I read it over and over again until I had memorized every word, always with the same thought:

Stupid girl.  I would have gotten the cowl.

At least the Mages’ Guild hall in Leyawiin was a good place to read.  My mother was a perpetual Associate – never did get all of her recommendation letters, because she wasn’t that great with people.  She liked mysticism best, and hoped that I would follow in her footsteps.  I grew up underfoot of mages, snatching soul gems and magic rings and then being forced to give them back once she found them.

She realized eventually that the more she tried to teach me about mysticism, the more I used it to take things I couldn’t reach physically and see whether anyone was close enough to catch me at it.  When I was in my teens she finally gave up and sent me to my father in the Imperial City.

That was charming.  Imperial brats were not very forgiving of me for having dark gray hair, or for having a Breton mother and an Imperial name.  Unwed parents, and my father a failed gambler in a shack on the Waterfront.  It all added up to popularity.  I consoled myself with two things.  One was the little treasure box I kept under my bed, full of trinkets I stole from the rude kids.  Caula’s little gold chain, Herminia’s Welkynd stone that she was so blasted fond of bragging about.

The other was the Gray Fox.  I devoured stories of the legendary thief and protector of the poor folk of the Waterfront, and always imagined that I would follow in his footsteps.  Not so much for the “protector of the poor” thing, although I supposed it would have been nice to feel he’d really been doing that for me.  I wanted the adventure and the challenge of pulling the really big jobs.

When I was sixteen Dad started taking me to the taverns with him to watch him play.  To be his “good luck charm,” although it only helped a little.  On the positive side, I got more limber wrestling out of drunken grasps, and the one time he almost lost me in a bet I managed to pay myself out with what I’d picked out of the pockets of the other players.

Everything changed for me on the day the Dragon came.  Everybody says that.  What _I_ mean is that Dad died in the attack.  He’d lost more than we could afford, and he went to the Temple of the One to pray for a change of luck.  Isn’t that brilliant?  Never went there once in his damned life, and that was the day he picked.  They found him all burned up next to a clannfear.

I was twenty-two.  Old enough to be out on my own, but I’d been sticking around to help Dad, out of habit I suppose.  Trying to keep his debts paid, if only so I wouldn’t be the one hunted down for them later.  But that was pointless, because he was still deep in the hole on the day he died, and of course everyone wanted it from me.

I turned where I always turned when I was in trouble:  to Othrelos.

He was at his house in Elven Gardens, as usual.  He didn’t go out much at night.  He preferred to rob houses during the day, when his neighbors were away at their jobs.  He was good enough to pull that off, and it actually made him look more like a respectable citizen.

He was about the only person I was close to, and for that he was perfect.  He didn’t look or act much older than me, although as a Dunmer he probably was – but he was more established, and willing to look out for his friends.  He always understood me, and he was criminal without being unsavory, if that makes sense.  Other girls might have brothers, friends, and lovers that were separate, but I had Othrelos.

I knocked, not because he would have cared if I let myself in, but because he didn’t live alone and I didn’t want to be yelled at.  As soon as he opened the door, he pulled me in, nudged the door shut, and embraced me.  “I heard about your father.  I’m so sorry.”

I gave a sad little chuckle.  “You don’t know how sorry.  He owed two thousand septims.”

He stiffened a little.  “To whom?”

“Fathis Ules.”

He held me back a little to look me in the face, his red eyes full of concern.  “Oh, Lum.  That’s serious.”  He brushed a wisp of hair out of my face.  “And you don’t have it, do you?”

“I can _get_ it, but no, I don’t _have_ it.  And you know how he’d prefer to be paid.  He won’t wait until I have the cash.”  Fathis was the one who’d almost won me in a bet, and he hadn’t been thrilled not to get me.  Twisted old mer.  And sadly, a twisted old mer who had a habit of beating my father senseless at cards.

He sighed and pulled me back close to him, scratching at the back of my neck.  He knew what I was going to ask.  We’d done this dance before.

“I’ll pay you back.  Ten percent extra.”

“I know you will.”  He clucked his tongue and squeezed me a little tighter.  “When are you going to actually join the Guild so I can protect you properly?”

I laughed.  “Fathis is _in_ the Guild.  Anyway, it’s not like Dad can get into trouble again, is it?  This should be the last time.”

“I’ll pay him off, Lum, but even so you should clear out for a little while, just to be safe.  You shouldn’t have trouble slipping out of town unnoticed – everything’s still such a mess.”  He shook his head.  “Is your mother still down in Leyawiin?”

“As far as I know.  It’s not like she ever writes, or anything.”

“Go down there.  I’ll send a letter to the Mages’ Guild when Fathis is calmed down.”

I laid my forehead against his shoulder.  “Thank you, O.”

He turned to kiss my forehead, then lifted my chin.  “It may be a while before I see you, then,” he murmured.

I smirked at him.  “So Mom’s not home?”

Of course Mandil wasn’t really his mother, but he and the Bosmer woman did share the house, and she tended to pitch a fit if she had to listen to us.

He grinned, which lit up his ashen-blue face.  “No, Mom’s not home.  So kiss me goodbye.”

I tilted my head up to meet his, and our lips touched.  As the kiss deepened, I raised my arms around his neck, and his hands started to pull gently at my waist, then stroke up and down my back.  When I started to pull at his shirt, he drew back and made as if to lead me to the stairs.  I pulled him back to me.

“No,” I grinned, “here’s fine.”  When he looked uncertain, I added, “Mom’s not home.”  We could be anywhere we liked.  And if I liked downstairs on her expensive new rug, then that was where we were going to be.

He chuckled and relaxed into me, and I got his shirt off and ran my hands down his chest, marveling as usual at how bright and pink my hands looked against his skin.  He slid his fingers under the collar of my shirt, kissing me again, then started to unbutton.  The first few times he passed his palms across my breasts were, as usual, a bit more gentle than I liked, both because his basic nature was gentle and because annoying each other just a little before we gave in was part of our game.  I pushed down on his shoulders to get him to kneel.  He knew the prompt:  he grinned and started to suck hard, biting and pinching until I moaned as I grabbed into his black hair.

I felt his fingers start to work at unfastening my pants, and I stepped out of them for him.  He tugged at my pubic hair a couple of times before sinking his fingers into me.  I gasped and let him work there for a good moment, watching him stare up at me, his eyes gleaming with delight as I panted.  Then I shoved him backward onto the floor and knelt over him, pulling his trousers down and straddling him.

I moved my body up and down over him as if he was already in me, but my hand was between us, stroking him.  He loved a little tease first:  he looked up at me heavy-lidded, his hands on my shoulders urging me to maintain this rhythm.  When I finally slid him into me, he hissed and brought his hands down to cup my breasts.  That just for a minute, and then he reached up for my head and yanked at my braids, undoing them with his fingers until my hair hung down between us in a wavy mess, another thing he loved.  I shook it out to make it even wilder, and brushed it against his cheek.

I pinched his nipples, and he arched toward me, grinning and clawing at my loosened hair.  “Faster,” he whispered, bucking upward with his hips to reinforce the idea.  I obliged him and raked my nails across his chest, leaving white trails rather than red ones on his bluish skin.

Without warning, he wrapped his arms around my waist and rolled us over so that he was on top of me, then immediately took over the thrusting.  I gasped and threw both arms and legs around him, and he chuckled.  He was not always this bold, but I adored it when he was.  He moved in smooth, long glides that were not too slow and yet not quite fast enough, the speed he knew tormented me into coming rather than taking me there quickly.  No amount of writhing would persuade him to my speed, and he grinned at my growling and clawing at his back.

But when I squealed and clenched around him, he lost his reserve, and fell upon me with much more speed, kissing me with a little moan and shaking as he came.  The kiss went deeper and more desperate for a minute before it gentled.  We lay there for a while without moving, our limbs tangled, the luxurious piles of Mandil’s precious foreign rug soft against my back.

Then he stroked my hair and kissed me again.  “Anyway,” he whispered, “you should go soon.  Before Fathis starts really looking for you.”

“I know.”  I touched his cheek.  “And before Mom gets home and finds us naked on her rug.”

“I’ll take care of everything.”  He kissed his way down my neck, then rose to his knees and handed me my shirt.  Once we were dressed, he pulled me to him again, arms around my waist, his forehead lowered to mine.  “Be careful.”

We both laughed at what a silly thing that was to say to me.  “No,” I said.  “But I’ll be safe.”

He gave me one last kiss before I left.  “Shadow hide you,” he said.


	2. Dirty Business

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Otherlos takes on Luminara's debt, but wants her to join the Thieves' Guild for protection. Meanwhile, Lum visits her mother's chapter of the Mages' Guild in Leyawiin and engages in various odd jobs involving orcs, bandits, and scamps. (sex chapter) (not with the scamps)

It was true that the Imperial City was still more or less in chaos.  That made it easier to slip away initially, but it also meant that I had to keep my head down on the road, because word was getting out, and anyone who thought I might be from there wanted to hear everything I knew about Dagon and the Dragon, which was nearly nothing.  I hadn’t been in the Temple District when it happened, so I only had the same rumors to go by as anyone else.

On the other hand, to ask me they had to come close enough for me to pick their pockets, so I had plenty of traveling money, plus some still left over when I got to Leyawiin.

Agata was polite as always, but I knew she wasn’t thrilled to see me.  When I asked her if my mother was there, she also went uncharacteristically awkward.

“You don’t know?  She left a month ago.  She said she was going to Valenwood.  She also said she sent a letter to you and Maurius telling you about it.  I suppose this means she didn’t.”  I shook my head, and she sighed.  “I’m sorry.  The woman couldn’t find her head in - no, no, I don’t mean it.”

“Yes, you do.  And you’re right.”  I crossed my arms and braced myself.  “Did she bother to say why she wanted to go to Valenwood?”

“Oh, I have no idea.  You know how she is.  By the way, since I assume she didn’t tell you this either, Kalthar’s gone too.  Not with her.”  She snorted.

Well, that was something, at least.  I’d never liked Kalthar.  “Can I stay anyway, Agata?  I won’t make any trouble this time.  I need a place for a while.”

She frowned.  “You’re not technically - well, but you’re family, in a way.  I don’t suppose Dagail will mind.  If you don’t make any trouble.  Seriously, Luminara, please.”

“I know.  I’m trying to keep a low profile anyway.  And I know I’m asking for a favor, and I’m not going to blow it.”  I didn’t add that I’d spent years exploring what the mages of Leyawiin had in their possession, and none of it was worth more to me than the free room and board and the little good will that was left there.  They’d been more present to me in some ways than my mother had been, when I lived at the Guild.

I dropped what little I had with me upstairs and made my way to the larder to get something to eat, and I ran into Alves.  She had been my favorite as a girl, because she’d been nice to me.  Besides that I’d always found Dunmer innately interesting, and she was even more so because she was, strangely, blond.

We chatted idly for a few minutes.  Kalthar was gone because he’d been found out for stealing that amulet Dagail always wore.  I didn’t think that was anything to expel a man from the Guild for - in fact it seemed to me like the most interesting thing he’d ever done - but apparently there was some other problem attending that.  Dagail had been really out of sorts over it, but she was back to normal now, and very friendly with the new Arch-Mage.

“Since you’re here,” Alves said abruptly, dropping her voice a little, “do you think you could do me a little favor?”

“Sure.”  As I said, I’d always liked Alves.  She’d even taught me my first illusion spell, which anyone else could have told her was in defiance of common sense.

“Could you go and just look in on Rosentia Gallenus?  She hasn’t been coming around for our normal get-togethers lately, and I’m worried something strange is going on.  But she doesn’t like me to go over there.  Appearances, you know.”

Yes, I knew.  I’d always wondered why they were friends.  Since I remembered where the house was, I went straight over and let myself in.

The place stank.  It smelled like goat musk and feces and just a hint of brimstone.  I fled upstairs to where the stench was weaker, to look for Rosentia.  She wasn’t on this floor, so I helped myself to one or two little things she wouldn’t be likely to miss right away.  Then I went back downstairs, and this time, I noticed the hissing noise.

She was in a back room, surrounded by scamps, the source of the smell.  They all turned to look at me with insipid, blank stares, and did nothing else except hiss and stink.

Rosentia looked at her wit’s end.  “Alves sent me,” I said, and she came alive.

“Oh, thank the Nine.  You’ve got to help me get rid of these things.”

“I don’t know any conjuration.”

“Wouldn’t make any difference if you did,” she snapped.  “It’s the damned staff, you see.”  She brandished the walking stick she was holding:  the closer scamps ducked.  “I collect oddities, and I thought a daedric staff would be fabulous, especially at the price I paid for it.  Well!  I made the mistake of reading the inscription, you see.  And here they are.  I can’t send them away, and I can’t even seem to bring myself to put the blasted staff down.  And I can’t go out of the house and be _seen_ with these nasty creatures.  Go and ask Alves what to do!  She’ll know!”

I went back to the Guild and reported to Alves, who was chagrined.  “Azura’s eyes - she bought the Staff of Everscamp.”  She shook her head.  “A toy of Sheogorath’s.  She won’t be able to put it down, but she can _give_ it to you, and then you can take it down to Darkfathom Cave.  There’s an altar there you can leave it on.  That should work.”  When I raised my eyebrows at _should_ , she added apologetically, “I’m sure she’ll pay you something nice for your trouble.  I’ll make sure.”

Cash would be especially nice, I thought, given my situation.  But I was always open to other options.  I went back and took the staff from Rosentia.

The smell was even better from the center of the ring of scamps, and I also found myself feeling oddly sluggish.  As I walked out of the house it felt like walking through deep water.

Had I told Agata I was trying to keep a low profile?  So much for that.  Everyone I passed turned to stare as I made my sluggish way toward the northeast gate at the opposite end of town.  The scamps hissed and capered and ogled back at the passersby, but followed me obediently.  A few people actually recognized me, which is what one gets for being distinctive-looking, and I waved gamely at them.

“Hello!  Yes, it has been a while, hasn’t it?  Oh, these?  They’re just scamps.  You have to walk them, you know.  It’s like dogs.”  And so on.

At least it was a nice day to go out walking, and the countryside around Leyawiin is pretty enough.  The only issue once we were clear of people was that there were more scamps down in the cave, and they were not as domesticated as the ones accompanying me.  And mine wouldn’t fight for me, either, unless they got hit directly.  They just stood there like idiots while I practiced the bits of swordplay I happened to know.

Down at the bottom of the cave was a statue of a dapper gentleman I assume must have been Sheogorath.  Apparently the god of madness liked to dress well.  The compulsion to keep the staff faded, and I put it down at the statue’s feet.  The scamps settled in around it, looking up at the image admiringly.

All good.  On the way out, I picked my way into a couple of chests I’d noticed lying around and got some money that way.  I had debts to pay, and every little bit helped.

Rosentia was relieved to be rid of the scamps and the staff, although she was still dismayed at the smell lingering in the house, as I would have been.  She gave me a magic ring she said would make me a better fighter:  I hoped I wouldn’t need it, but I thought I’d keep it anyway.  I also helped myself to a few other little things on the way out - things made of metal, things that wouldn’t hold on to the stench.

The problem was going to be selling them.  It was hard to find fences who would work with someone outside the Thieves’ Guild.  I’d known someone in Leyawiin, but I’d been gone for years, and I was concerned that he might be gone.

He wasn’t.  Weebam-Na was still in the same little house he’d always had, and he’d moved his girlfriend in with him.  She answered the door.

“It’s Luminara, isn’t it?  You’ve been gone for ages.  Come right in.  Just don’t say anything about the _rats_.”

“Rats!” he yelled from the other end of the room.  “They’re all over town!  That idiot must have turned them all loose when they drove him out of town.  He really thought people were going to _eat_ them.  Sautéed rat and mud crab with asparagus!”

I smiled.  “What, that doesn’t sound good to you?  I’ve seen you eat worse.”

He finally realized who I was and crossed to meet me.  “You’ve been scarce, Luminara.”

“I thought I told you I was moving to the Imperial City.  I’m just visiting.  But I have some things for you, if you’re interested.”

Everything I gave him was worth two hundred septims all together.  Eighteen hundred to go.  Oh, no, wrong - still two thousand, because I promised Othrelos interest.  This was going to take a while.

Another knock came at the door, and Weebam-Na quickly stashed his purchases before waving Bejeen permission to answer.  This time, it was a courier from the Castle, asking Weebam-Na to come with him.

“What?” Weebam-Na snarled, in a little too defensive a tone.  “I haven’t done anything.  You haven’t brought any guards.”

“No, it’s nothing like that.  We’re trying to get rid of a loiterer, and she’s asking for you.  We’d like you to come and persuade her to leave.  Name’s Mazoga.”

“Hmm.  I’ve never heard of her.”  He looked over at me.  “Odd.  Do you want to come along?”

I shrugged assent and followed Weebam-Na and the courier.  When I’d lived here, I used to go out with Weebam-Na now and again when he needed to deal with new people.  A lot of folk who didn’t think well of Argonians had a better first response to a cute little Breton girl, although sometimes it was the other way around.

This one was going to prefer Weebam-Na, though.  Mazoga was a burly Orc woman, and she was standing in the entryway of the Castle in armor.  She didn’t have a helmet, so we could see the stubborn set of her green snout.

“I’m Sir Mazoga,” she said, “the Knight.”

Weebam-Na and I glanced at each other without saying anything.  Skeptical.

“Are you Weebam-Na?” she asked.

“Ah.  Yes.  I hear you were asking for me.  We haven’t met, have we?”

“No.  I need you to take me to Fisherman’s Rock.”

Weebam-Na looked at me again, and then back to her.  “Any particular reason?”

“That’s none of your business.  Just take me to Fisherman’s Rock.”

“I’d really rather not.  But I’ll tell you how to get there.  It’s up the road on the left, about half way between Blankenmarsh and the Drunken Dragon Inn.”

“I need you to take me there.”

Weebam-Na was about to protest again when I interrupted.  “Oh, I’ll take her.  I’ve got nothing else to do.”  I looked back to her.  “We can go in the morning.  My name’s Luminara.”

“You know the way?”  I nodded my head, and she nodded back.  “Good.  In the morning, then.  You can call me Sir Mazoga.”

“Uh-huh.”  We walked away from her, bemused.

She was there bright and early the next morning, but no more willing to tell me what her business was than the day before.  That was fine, but the walk was kind of boring for the lack of conversation.  She barely opened her toothy mouth to me until we were nearly there.

“I need to talk to Mogens Wind-Shifter,” she said.  “No head-bashing until I’m done.”

I should have expected that the word “head-bashing” would be invoked sooner or later, since she was an Orc.  Happily I’d brought my little sword, so I could get myself out of any trouble she was about to get me into.

Mogens was a fairly attractive Nord, so it was really too bad that Mazoga was there to kill him.  He was a bandit, and he’d murdered her friend for reporting him.  I decided not to get in Mazoga’s way even though Mogens was pretty, because, maybe ironically, I didn’t really approve of bandits.  I didn’t like the overt violence of waylaying people on the road.

But like many bandits, Mogens had a gang, and simply standing aside didn’t stay an option for long.  I had to fight two of them myself.  Happily, Mazoga wasn’t bad with a longsword, so she did the rest.

She thanked me for helping her, and said that in her friend’s memory, she was going to go on being a knight and “righting wrongs” in Leyawiin.  It was kind of sad - obviously they’d been very close.  Since I wasn’t on any noble quest myself, I felt more comfortable searching the bodies, but they weren’t carrying anything very interesting.

We camped there and walked back the next morning.  She was more talkative now, and a good sort, if not very bright.  Like most Orcs in Tamriel she’d had kind of a rough childhood, and we bonded on that.  She thought we should be knights together, which was awkward.  I told her it was because I didn’t want the kind of attention that would get me, which was true enough.  I said she should take the credit for dealing with the bandits and be the knight, and I’d just help her out when I was in town.

There was a letter waiting for me back at the Guild hall.

_Lum -_

_I will be at the West Weald Inn in Skingrad on the 7 th.  Meet me there.  O._

Why in Skingrad if things were cleared up?  They must not be.  Cursed Fathis.  What else did he want?  Oh, well, never mind that, I knew perfectly well what else he wanted.  He liked pretty young things of various race and gender.  He kept them until he was bored and then sold them.  Just because slavery was banned in Tamriel and, recently, even in Morrowind didn’t mean it wasn’t still lurking in dark corners.

But Othrelos would have paid him by now, and Fathis shouldn’t be as fixated on me in particular as all that.  Surely I wasn’t that interesting.

I had time for a few more little scores in Leyawiin, but all together they were only worth another hundred or so.  I wasn’t impressed with my own progress.

Up in Skingrad I wore a skirt, because the West Weald was a nice inn and I didn’t want to stick out too badly.  Othrelos stood up for a moment as I came to his table, and sat again after I was in my chair.  He looked happy enough to see me, but not quite comfortable.

I pulled out the pouch with his money.  “I’ve got three hundred for you so far.”

He looked at it for a moment as if he wasn’t going to take it, but then he did, looking down.  “Okay, Lum.  But I want you to do something for me.”  He looked intently at me and took my hand.  “Fathis is going to Chorrol on business for a few days.  While he’s gone, I want you to go up to the Imperial City and join the Thieves’ Guild under Armand Christophe.  If you’re Armand’s, Fathis won’t touch you.”

“He can’t anyway, can he?  I thought you paid him.”

“Yeah.”  He looked down at my hand and squeezed it.  “I’m… I’m not going to be around as much for a little while.  I have to go away on some errands.  And I don’t trust him.  I want to be sure.”  He met my eyes again, looking distressed.  “You’ll do that for me, won’t you, Lum?  You’ll be able to get the money faster that way, too.  You’ll have better fences.”

I’d always meant to do it eventually.  “If it means that much to you, yes.”

He sighed in relief.  “Good.  Armand meets new recruits in the Waterfront, behind Dareloth’s house.  I told him you might be coming.”  I nodded.  “I’ll try to keep coming here on the seventh of each month, if you would like to meet me.”

“You’re going away for that long?  What are you doing?”

He shook his head.  “Best you don’t know.”  He put on a weak smile.  “Come up to my room and kiss me goodbye?”

What in the world had he gotten himself into?

I followed him up to the room.  As soon as the door was closed he started unbraiding my hair, gazing over my face as if he was trying to memorize me.

“O, tell me what’s going on.”

“Nothing,” he breathed, and pulled me into his kiss.  His tongue found mine, and he traced his hands over my breasts, then brought them up underneath my shirt.  He pinched my nipples without having to be asked, and that drove all the questions right out of my head.  I pulled off his shirt, and then mine, and he started to nibble at the sweet spot where my neck met my shoulder.  He backed toward the bed, pulling me after him.  He slid my skirt down over my hips, then pulled his pants off as I lay down on the bed.

He came to me from the side, kissed me, then straddled my face.  I took him into my mouth as he stroked my thigh to persuade me to open my legs for him, not that I needed to be convinced.  He pried me open with his fingers and started licking, and I twitched instantly.  He’d always had a talent for that.  I sucked him deeper as he circled my clit with his tongue.  Then he worked his fingers into me, and I gasped and rocked my hips toward him, trying to control the movement so as not to force him to stop.  Likewise he was instinctively thrusting into my throat but forcing himself to pause every so often.  He didn’t want to come before me.

When he knew I was close he withdrew from my mouth and focused all of his attention between my legs, sucking and licking at the same time until my whole body spasmed, I clenched my teeth against screaming - the reason he always withdrew at this point - and smacked his ass to make him stop.  He took one discreet bite at the inside of my thigh before he turned around to lick at each of my breasts on his way toward my face.

He kissed my neck and then my mouth, and I could still smell and taste myself on him.  I reached down to pull his hips toward me, and he entered me quickly, going this time at my pace, hard and deep and fast.  I grinned and clenched my fingers into his flesh, urging him on.  He twined his fingers into my hair and watched me with bright red eyes.

“Lum, I -”  But then he sighed and bit into my neck, and I groaned.  We came together and both stopped moving abruptly as the pleasant shock went through us.  He stroked his cheek against mine and then kissed it before falling onto the bed beside me, one arm still draped over my waist.

We lay there for a few minutes before he spoke.  “It’s late,” he muttered.  “Stay until morning.”

I’d never spent the night before.  As I turned to look at him, he added, a little more coherently, “If you haven’t paid for a room, I mean.”

I thought for a few seconds, then settled in against him.  “No, I haven’t.  Thank you.”

He smiled and curled in toward me, closing his eyes.


	3. It'll Cost You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luminara gains access to the Thieves' Guild, then goes down to Anvil and gains access to a hot pirate and an abandoned ship. Othrelos was right, this is a great idea! (sex chapter)

He bought me breakfast in the morning, but still wouldn’t tell me anything except that he was “taking a few contracts” and was going to be traveling more than usual.

I mused over that as I walked up toward the Imperial City.  I’d always thought of him as pretty well off, what with the house and all.  I’d never thought twice about borrowing from him when my father got us into trouble, partly because Othrelos never seemed to think twice about lending to me.

Why would he need to take contracts outside the City?  He didn’t usually go anywhere except Skingrad.  He wouldn’t have agreed to pay Fathis Ules for me if he didn’t have the money, would he?

Well, all right:  the priority was to get into the Thieves’ Guild and then start making the money back for him.  I’d hurry the repayment along so Othrelos could come home.  He was sort of a homebody.

Oh.  _Home._   There was a thought.  By now I didn’t have one.  My father hadn’t owned our little Waterfront shack, of course, and now it was up for sale.  If Othrelos wasn’t away he’d have let me stay with him, but I doubted Mandil liked me enough to let me use his room when he wasn’t there.  I’d have to shell out for an inn or sleep out on the street with the beggars.

I went and waited behind Dareloth’s house.  The locals all knew it as “Dareloth’s house” even though nobody knew who Dareloth was, and the house was apparently abandoned.  The locals all likewise knew that it was only _apparently_ abandoned, and was actually a staging area for various illegal activities.  The city guard knew it too, but their will to prevent it was only sporadic.

Three people straggled into the yard after dark, two of whom I knew already because they’d been my neighbors.  One was Methredhel, a Bosmer girl.  We’d crossed paths a few times before:  like Othrelos, she seemed like she was about my age although she probably wasn’t.  The other was a middle aged Redguard - Armand Christophe.  The third person was a stranger to me, an Argonian who introduced himself as Amusei.

Armand set us a test to make sure we were competent thieves:  he said that he would only take the one who brought him the diary of Amantius Allectus.  We were not to kill him or each other - “This isn't the Dark Brotherhood,” Armand said.  He would be back the next night at midnight to see if any of us had succeeded.

He’d barely stopped talking when Methredhel grinned like a fiend and ran off.  She knew where Amantius lived, as I did.  I didn’t take after her because I knew she was a better runner than I was.  Longer legs, even though she was short like me.  Amusei, on the other hand, was not a local, so he just started wandering around hoping for who knew what.

Poor simple sod.  He didn’t even know enough to ask around among the beggars.

I went down the street to where Puny Ancus usually camped out, woke him, and asked him what kind of hours Methredhel was keeping these days.  She and her girlfriend always went out to dinner at six.

They’d moved everything out of our old house, but it hadn’t sold yet and there was nobody guarding it.  I slept on the floor where my cot used to be, glad I’d thought to take my little treasure box down to Leyawiin.  Dad could have bought the place outright for the amount he’d died owing to Fathis Ules.  He could have saved so much money if he’d settled for just being a drunk.

I spent the day idly, and moved into position in the late afternoon.  Eventually Methredhel emerged from her house, looking to be in high spirits.  Her mopey girl Adanrel went with her - homely, like Mandil.  Homely Bosmer women were all horse-faced:  the pretty ones, like Methredhel, tended to higher cheekbones and less beaky noses.

After they’d been gone a few minutes, I let myself into the house and started my search.  The diary was in a locked chest.  In case this was her treasure box, I was nice and didn’t take anything else.

A few more hours and I was able to hand the book over to Armand with a peaceful smile on my face.  The others didn’t show up:  Methredhel was probably searching her house madly for the diary, and Amusei had likely just given up entirely.

Armand grinned.  “Othrelos was right about you, then,” he said.  Then he accepted me into the Guild with him as my doyen, and told me the fines for robbing or hurting fellow Guild members, and how to get bribes paid to city officials.  I might be hired for special jobs and rise in the organization if I proved capable enough.

I was sure I would prove more than capable enough for him, but that wasn’t my current concern, so I asked about fences.  My first Guild fence was to be Ongar, who lived up in Bruma.  That was a shame, for two reasons.  One, I’d grown up in warm, wet Leyawiin, and cold, dry Bruma did not sound like a treat to me.  Two, I hadn’t told Agata or anyone else at the Guild that I’d be leaving for good again.  I didn’t want to not leave things wrapped up like my mother always did.

So I headed south first.  When I got back down to the Leyawiin Guild hall, Agata was in fits - not over me, but over a letter from my darling mother.

_Have arrived in Anvil.  Need an escort back to Leyawiin.  Send someone to The Count‘s Arms. - Yvette Ganon._

“Just like her,” Agata snarled as I read it.  “Just like her to wander back home and expect someone to come running.”

“I’ll go,” I sighed.  “She’s my mother.”  Then I thought for a moment.  “Why does she want an escort?  She left on her own, didn’t she?  What’s the difference?”

“She didn’t leave alone.  She left with some Nord she met at a tavern.”

Ah, of course.  Big, burly Nords were her usual type.  Not men like my father, as she used to tell me frequently.  But they’d met when luck had still been with him, and she’d thought of him as a rich Imperial and potential ticket into higher society.  That had fallen apart quickly enough.

Another long walk, then, down to Anvil.  It turned out to be an appealing city, with white buildings and the smell of the sea.   My mother was at the inn, drinking.  She was still lovely, even though she was starting to look a little worn around the edges.  Most of her hair was still black, just a few strands now of the gray I’d had from birth. 

She greeted me with all the warmth of a casual acquaintance.  “Luminara.  What are you doing here?”

_What are you doing here._   It was going to be one of these interactions with her, then, the kind that made Agata want to pull out her hair.  “You sent a letter to the Guild saying you wanted an escort.  So I’m here to escort you.”

She snorted.  “A little girl.  How useful.  They couldn’t have sent me Kalthar?”

“No, they couldn’t.  He’s been expelled.”

“Oh.”  She shrugged.  “Well, I’m sorry you went to the trouble.  It turns out I’ve found someone to make the trip with me after all.  Another day and you would have missed me.”

Of course.  “A Nord, I suppose.”

“Sigmund,” she grinned, and took a sip of her drink.

I sat down and sighed.  “Thanks for letting us know.  I have my own problems to attend to, you know.”

“Are you pregnant?”  I shook my head, and she nodded and took another drink.  “Good.  Don’t ever have children if you can help it, Luminara.”

“Ruin my life.  I know.  We’ve had that talk.”  I wished I had a drink myself.  “So are you going to ask how Dad is?”

She smirked.  “Of course.  How is Maurius?”

“Dead.”

That actually shut her up for a minute.  Finally she took my hand, which was as good as she got as a mother.  “I’m sorry, baby.  How did he go?”

“Daedra.  He was at the Temple of the One praying for luck when it was attacked.”

She laughed.  “Of course.  That’s your father.”  Then she looked at me and sobered herself.  “Well, anyway, he can’t gamble you away now.”

“You knew about that?” 

Her eyes widened.  “Oh, did he really?  I was just joking.  But it figures.”  She waved off the whole conversation with one hand.  “Anyway, take some time to enjoy Anvil while you’re here.  It’s an amusing city, especially out on the docks.  I won’t be needing your help.”

I had been dismissed, so I left.  There was no point prolonging the agony for both of us.  I needed a drink, and I didn’t want to get it where she was drinking, so I headed out toward the docks.  There’d be another tavern out there, surely.  Yes - The Flowing Bowl.  This was where the people more of my sort would be.  In fact, hadn’t Weebam-Na told me he knew a freelance fence here?  Khafiz.  Since I was in town anyway, it would be handy to find a local fence.

There was a good crowd, as seemed proper for a tavern on a dock.  Khafiz sounded like a Khajiit name to me, so that was what I looked for first, but no luck.  I did, however, spot a perfectly gorgeous Imperial man with long black hair.  Perhaps he’d like to buy me a drink.

He was definitely a sailor:  he still smelled of the sea, and he had the thick hands of someone who hauled a lot of rope.  He was sitting with a plain, disinterested Redguard, and several empty tankards were on the table between them. 

I decided they would tolerate a straightforward approach, and I took the last few steps toward their table with a casual air.  “Are you drunk enough to buy ale for a stranger yet?” I smiled.

The pretty Imperial looked me up and down, grinned, and pushed out the empty chair next to him.  “For you, yes.”  As I sat, he shouted over my shoulder for more ale.  “But let’s not be strangers by the time it gets here.  Zedrick Green.  That’s Khafiz,” he added, gesturing toward the Redguard.

“Luminara.”  Then I realized who he’d introduced, and turned toward Zedrick’s silent drinking partner.  “You’re Khafiz?  Do you know Weebam-Na from Leyawiin?”

He nodded.  “How do you know him?”

“We’ve worked together,” I said, with the slight smile one used to indicate the nature of the work.  “He recommended you if I was ever in Anvil.”

“I see.”  He started to look more interested in the conversation.  “Are you looking to transact business right now?”

“No, but I’m glad to find you for later.”  I turned my attention back to Zedrick, the one I’d actually come over to meet.  “Do you work with Khafiz?”

He snorted and took a swig of his ale before answering.  “Not currently.  I’m between jobs.”

“So you’re not from the Clarabella.”  He raised his eyebrows at me, so I smiled.  “Just because I work on land doesn’t mean I don’t understand the principle, you know.  What happened to your ship?”

He frowned.  “Captain got caught when we were on shore in Hammerfell.  Made my way back down to Anvil to look for a new crew.”

My drink had arrived.  “Dangerous line of work,” I said, raising it to my lips.  “I hope it pays well enough to be worth all the extra risk.”

“When it goes right, it does.”

We devoted a little while to drinking and ogling each other.  Maybe Khafiz felt neglected, because he was the one who brought up the new subject.  “There’s supposed to be an abandoned ship under Castle Anvil.  In a cave.”

 “Really.”  I sipped at my third ale and pretended indifference.

“Pirate ship.  Been there hundreds of years.  Could still have its last haul in it.”

I chuckled and glanced sidelong at Zedrick.  “What do you think?”

He slammed down his tankard.  “It’s worth a look.  Let’s go.”

We rose, and Zedrick touched one hand to the small of my back as we walked out of the tavern into the night air.  The moonlight shimmered on the water, and made silvery the other drunken sailors staggering up and down the docks.  When we reached the bridge to the little island where Castle Anvil stood, Khafiz started to laugh.

“Oh!”  He doubled over.  “There’s going to be guards, aren’t there?  Around the castle.”

“Where’s the cave supposed to be?” I asked.

“Around on the far side.”

“We’ll swim!”  Zedrick peeled off his shirt and strode toward the water.  When he noticed we weren’t following, he turned around and beckoned with both arms.  “Come on, then!”

I could see the definition of all the muscles of his chest and arms beneath the skin.  He was just gorgeous.  I followed him into the waves, Khafiz behind me, and I suppressed a shriek at how cool it was.  The water was relatively peaceful, and we swam around the rocky edge of the island without much difficulty.

Zedrick found the spot first, and roared in outrage.  “It’s not a cave, it’s a _door._   And it’s locked.”

“Allow me!” I called, and swam to the spot, then stood, because near the door the water was shallow.  I dug around for a lockpick and set to work as Khafiz caught up with us.  Neither the sea nor the ale was helpful, but eventually I managed to unlock the door, and I opened it with a grin.

“Very nice,” Zedrick smiled back, climbing into the darkness.  “Anybody bring a torch?” he called back over his shoulder.

“Not likely!” I giggled.  “We’re, you know, in the water.”

“Damn!  Light spell?”

“That I can do.”  I stepped in after him and cast the spell, raising one hand.  We were in a little cave, dry around the edges with a depression full of sea water in the middle.

Khafiz came in and looked around, then harrumphed.  “Well, that’s not as interesting as I’d hoped.”

Zedrick waded across and beckoned us forward.  “There’s another opening here.  Maybe it gets better.”

It did:  at the other end of a narrow passage it opened out into a much larger cave of much more interest.  But the first things we noticed were the skeletons, because they attacked us.

Zedrick barked in surprise but got his cutlass pulled out before the first of them reached us.  That was a good thing, because Khafiz and I were both slower on the draw.  I got my sword out as Zedrick dispatched the first of them with a mighty cut.  I wasn’t useless with a blade, so I got another of them killed - well, destroyed - while Zedrick put down a third.  Others came down from further away, and in the end there was a pile of bones from some half a dozen of them scattered all around us.

We stood still for a moment after the last of them fell.  Then we all started to laugh hysterically.  We kept laughing when we realized that we were standing in front of the wreckage of a ship.

“How did they ever get it in here?” Khafiz asked, still laughing.

It was in rather good condition, and surrounded by multiple docks leading to and from its deck from various platforms of rock.  “I get the ship,” I announced.

Zedrick sneered at me playfully.  “You can’t have the ship!  What would you do with it?”

“What would _you_ do with it?  You can’t get it out of the cave.  So it’s mine.  It’s my house.  You can go and get a real ship.”

Zedrick and Khafiz looked at each other, then shrugged.  “Fine,” Zedrick said.  “Your ship.  But we split anything else.”

We explored the cavern before boarding the ship.  We found a few weapons, a good bit of gold, and a little cell Khafiz said would be perfect for his _pig._   We laughed for a few more minutes over the idea of a pet pig, then staggered back out toward the docks and onto the ship.

A rude surprise on board:  one more skeleton, more powerful than the others, with what seemed to be an enchanted cutlass.  Zedrick and I fought it together.  As it fell, my attention immediately shifted to the way the sweat was glistening on Zedrick’s muscular chest, and the violent grace with which he moved.

He looked over at me, and his pale eyes lit up as if he was thinking something similarly flattering about me.  He waved back at Khafiz without looking at him.  “Why don’t you go get your pig?  We’ll wait for you here.”

“Yeah, great,” Khafiz snarled.  “You always get the girl, don’t you?”

“So stop at the Foc’s’le first, and get your own.  Don’t hurry back on our account.”

Khafiz clucked his tongue at us but retreated out of the cabin.  Zedrick immediately strode over to me and grabbed me to him with a fierce kiss.  I returned it urgently:  I’d been waiting for it ever since I demanded to be bought a drink.  He was the most beautiful human male I’d ever seen.  His fingers dug into my ass as he pulled my hips toward his - a bit of a task, since I was so much shorter.  I came up onto my toes.

“So,” he whispered into my ear.  “Your ship.  Where do you want it, Captain?”

I looked around and realized there really weren’t many options.  The space was completely bare.  But I certainly didn’t intend to lie down in centuries of dust.  I pulled him with me to the nearest wall, leaned against it, and resumed our kiss.  He pressed in close against me, and I dragged my nails down his bare back, making him gasp.  Grinning, he opened my shirt; but instead of playing with my breasts, he reached around behind me and slipped his hands into my pants, caressing my ass.

The swords were really becoming a nuisance.  I removed my belt and lowered it to the floor, then did the same with his.  He brought one of my hands down to his crotch, and I rubbed at him through the fabric, finding him to be of a pleasing size.  I opened his pants for better access, wrapping my fingers around his cock and stroking him.  His breath quickened and he bit at my lips.  Suddenly he spun me around to face the wall and pulled my pants down.  His hands ran up and down my sides, and he stooped to bite the fleshy part of my hip.

As I turned to watch him over my shoulder he bent his knees and pressed into me.  Again I had to stand on my toes to help him, and now I had to stay that way.  As he fell into rhythm he grabbed into the braids tied at the nape of my neck and jerked my head back.  I squealed, and the sound echoed through the empty ship, making him chuckle.  He slapped my ass, and I squealed louder.

He started to go harder, and I had to brace myself against the wall and will strength into my calves.  He was thicker than I was used to, and the friction started to get intense.  He reached around to my breasts - finally - and pinched at both nipples, which I felt all over my body.  Out of the corner of my eye I could just see his lovely face, slack and heavy-lidded, all focus on the sensation of fucking me.  I moaned with pleasure and felt myself tighten around him as I tried to crane my neck back further, to see him more clearly.  He responded with a weak grin and another pinch, then closed his eyes and sped up again.  He licked idly at the back of my neck, sighed, then gave me one little moan himself as he came.

He stood pressed tight against me for a few seconds, then staggered back a little and fell to his knees.  “Damn, that hurt my legs.”  He laughed.

I pulled my pants up and then turned and knelt with him, taking the opportunity I’d lacked during the sex to run my hands down his chest.  “Are you all right?  We’re going to have to swim again, you know.”

“Let’s wait a few minutes.”

“You think it’s going to hurt less when the ale wears off?” I smiled.

“Well, there’s a point.”  He smiled back.  “So, Khafiz and I can use the cave, right?  Just not the ship.”

I shrugged.  “Let’s say the ship too.  Just not the cabin.  The cabin’s mine.”

“Excellent.”  He gave me a light kiss as he fastened his trousers.  “We’ll need some kind of raft from now on, if we’re going to get our things here dry.  And the damned pig.  I doubt it can swim.”

“You’ll remember the cabin is mine, right?  I won’t always be here.”

He snorted.  “What a shock, thief girl.  Neither will I.  I don’t see a problem.”  He paused, then added with a lopsided grin, “Although you’ll have to pass through my part of the ship to get to yours, and I may charge a toll.”  He reached around and squeezed my ass playfully.

I smiled again.  “We’re going to get along very well.”


	4. A Fox to Chase

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After her monthly meeting/tumble/protective mumblings with Othrelos, Lum gets back to work for the Guild, and makes enough of an impression to get to meet the Gray Fox himself. (sex chapter)

After a quick nap in my mother’s room at the Count’s Arms, for which I assured them she would be paying, I started back up towards Bruma, where my “official” fence should be.  If I was going to be a Guild member I may as well be getting the benefits of that.

I’d never really spent much time north of the Imperial City, and I found Bruma ridiculously cold.  I had to spend some of the money I was saving for Othrelos on a decent room and warmer clothes.  Then I spent a couple of evenings sitting in the Tap and Tack, picking up local gossip so I would know who was worth robbing.  Apparently the nicest houses in town were right across the street, and both theoretically easy marks:  a senile old mer named Baenlin who barely ever got up out of his chair, and next door, the Bruma residence of the Arch-Mage herself, who was almost never there at all.

I was nervous going into the latter, thinking she might have some sort of magical traps or wards set, but she didn’t.  But a lot of what she had were items too obviously meaningful not to be missed, too unique to be easily sold.  I wasn’t interested in getting an Arch-Mage interested in me.  I took some less hazardous things - pieces of silver, and items she had a great number of, like Welkynd stones.  Baenlin’s house was easier:  just the typical sorts of expensive nothings rich old people all had, and with the sense I’d picked up at the Tap and Tack of the butler’s schedule, it was easy to avoid him.

Ongar the Weary, my fence, was a tiresome man but not an offensive one.  He paid me several hundred septims for everything, and sold me some extra lockpicks.  Between that money and what I’d gotten from the cave in Anvil, I was making real progress toward paying my debt to Othrelos - and by now it was nearly time to meet him in Skingrad, so I made the journey down there.

Skingrad was an odd city, divided into two separately walled halves across from each other down the main road.  I turned into the northern side, where the West Weald Inn was.  As I was walking down to the west end, I suddenly felt someone come in close behind me, and Othrelos’s voice murmured in my ear.

“Not the Inn.  Wait a few minutes, then double back to Summitmist Manor.  It’ll be the last house on your left.  No one lives there.”  Then he was gone.  I didn’t turn to look at him, assuming there was some reason for this added discretion.  I wandered down the rest of the street more slowly, pretending to look at the Guild halls and shops.

When I came back the other way, I found that being the “last house” meant that Summitmist Manor was right next door to a guard tower.  Besides that, there was no back door.  A little challenge.  I smiled.  He used to pull this kind of trick on me back home, when I was still perfecting my craft, to test me.

Well, I’d just be lazy and use the front door.  I pulled a lockpick out of my braid and palmed it, then continued to wander idly around as I observed how often the city guards walked by.  When the way was clear I hurried to the door and jimmied it open.

Othrelos was waiting for me in the entryway, looking a little peaked but smiling.  “I’m glad to see you, Lum,” he said, pulling me into his embrace.

“I’m glad to see you too.  I’ve got a thousand septims for you.”

He looked down at me with his eyebrows raised.  “You’ve been busy.”

“I want to pay you back as soon as I can.  I know it was a lot of money, and I don’t want to be an inconvenience for longer than I have to be.”

“Ah.  Well.”  He gave me an additional squeeze.  As I put my arms further around him, it registered that he was wearing his bow and quiver.  “That’s good of you,” he said, “but you shouldn’t worry about it.”

“Of course I should.  I’m going to have the rest of it next month.”

He kissed the crown of my head.  “Anyway, since we’re here, I think we should look around and see what we like, don’t you?”  He broke away from me and took off his weapons.  “Make yourself comfortable.  The owner only comes to town a few days a year.”

The house was huge, three stories, and stashed in various places were some interesting weapons, lots of pieces of silver, and a few expensive bottles of wine.  Othrelos dumped the arrows out of his quiver so he could use it as a sack for the smaller items.  “Arrows are cheap,” he said.

I giggled.  “I miss this,” I told him, sitting down in front of the dining table we’d just cleared of valuables.  “I miss doing houses together.”

“So do I,” he grinned, and knelt in front of me.  He took hold of the arms of my chair and looked intently into my eyes.  “I’ve missed a lot of things.”

“So come around more.”  I leaned forward and gave him a light kiss.  He returned it hungrily, and I wrapped my arms around his neck.

“I can’t,” he muttered between kisses.  “I’m not sure I should even be here now.”  He stroked my bottom lip with the tip of his tongue.  “You joined the Guild?”

“Yes.”  I kissed his neck beneath the ear, making him sigh.  “Under Armand, like you asked me.”

“Good.”  His hands ran up and down my sides.  “So you haven’t had any trouble from Fathis?”

“No.  I haven’t even seen him.”  I nibbled at the base of his throat.  “Everything’s fixed, O.  Stop worrying.”

He groaned and bit into my neck.  I moved to the edge of the chair so that more of our bodies could be in contact.  His hands came up under my shirt, lifting it past my breasts, and he fondled and licked them with building urgency.  I purred and held his head in place:  his hands moved down to my legs, slowly raising the edge of my skirt over my thighs.

He slid one finger inside me and moved it slowly, just enough to tease.  “I like you in a skirt,” he whispered.  I rocked my hips in time with his hand, whining for more, and he smiled.  My bites at his lips and throat did not convince him to give me what I wanted, either.

“You’re not fair,” I growled, scooting forward more and grinding against him, forcing him to move his hand away entirely.  I pushed him back a little and grabbed at his trousers to open them.

“I’m not?” he grinned into my shoulder as I stroked him.  By now we were both panting together.

“You know what I want.  Give it to me.”

“What?” he asked, but then he brushed my hand aside and thrust into me, and stopped.  “This?”

I grabbed him to me and wrapped my legs around his thighs.  “Yes!”

He started to move again, and pressed his lips and tongue to mine.  Having him inside me again gave me chills, even though I was dressed and inside a warm house.  I ran my hands all over him, strangely annoyed that I couldn’t touch him everywhere at once.  His thrusting sped up, and he pulled my hips forward to meet him more and more frantically.  I began to reinforce the rhythm by pulling him toward me with my legs.

He looked into my eyes, and it felt as if we both realized at once how perfectly in sync we were, and that swept through both of our bodies in a delicious wave.  We clutched each other tight as it happened, and gasped, and stopped very still for a moment.  He reached up and stroked my cheek tenderly, then gave me a very soft kiss.

For a while neither of us broke the silence:  we just stayed there, with him leaning into me, his cheek against mine.  Finally I whispered, “Do you know yet whether you should be here?”

He laughed a little.  “Yes.”

“So when do we do this again?”

“In a month.  Keep being careful.”

I leaned back to look at his face, and noticed more than before how weary he seemed.  “Still Fathis?  Why are you so scared of him?”

He frowned for a moment, then stroked my hair.  “He’s had people killed before, Lum.  I’m scared of him because he’s dangerous.  But he stays clear of Armand, so make yourself valuable to him.”

That was alarming.  “I thought Guild members weren’t allowed to kill people.”

“Not during a robbery, but that’s not what Fathis does.  And he has to be more careful what he does to Guild members, which is why I wanted you to join.  And he makes enough to keep his fines paid if he’s found out.”  He kissed me again.  “And just humor me.”

“Oh.  Well, all right, then.”  I smiled.  “How long do you think he’ll hold the grudge?”

“He’s a Dunmer,” he snarled.  “Just make sure he never gets another claim on you.”

“No problem.  I never intend to gamble.”

As another part of his excessive-seeming caution, he insisted that we leave the manor separately.  He took everything we’d collected, because he had more time in the Guild and so more access to better fences.  I told him to keep my half against the amount I still owed him.  After a few more kisses, he left first.

So, I was to make myself valuable to Armand.  That was fine.  And when I got back to the Imperial City, an opportunity immediately presented itself:  Hieronymus Lex was making trouble again.  As a member of the Imperial Watch he’d always had it in for the Gray Fox, even when some of his superiors thought he was only a legend.  Lex was more adamant against robbery and theft than against rape and murder – and now that Adamus Phillida had retired, Lex had been raised to Captain.  His first act was to collect taxes from the Waterfront, which had always been exempt before, as a “message.”

One would assume it would be difficult to break into a watch tower, but it wasn’t really.  Civilians were actually allowed into the ground floor, and I found that during a shift change, it was easy enough to sneak up the ladders into the upper levels.  I got the tax money and records from Lex’s desk without any problem.  Sneaking back _down_ was more of an issue:  I had to wait for another shift change.  Fortunately, I was as small as most Breton girls, and could fit into a standard wardrobe, so I hid until I heard the telltale chaos beneath me.

Armand was as delighted with me as Othrelos could have wished.  He asked me to do another special job for him, this one in Cheydinhal.  I was to steal a bust of the deceased Countess from the Chapel of Arkay.

That I wasn’t sure about at all.  I knew how important the dead were to the Dunmer, and I didn’t think Othrelos would approve, even for the sake of impressing Armand.

“I know it seems like an odd request,” he said when he saw my hesitation, “but I assure you it will be worth your while.  You seem like an ambitious young woman, and the Gray Fox watches for thieves who are willing and able to do this kind of work.”

He didn’t seem like the sort of man to invoke a meaningless legend to inspire people.  “So he’s real?” I asked, with what was probably a little too much girlish enthusiasm in my face.

He smiled.  “If you do well, I will arrange for a personal meeting.”

_Make yourself valuable,_ he’d said.  He would forgive me this.

“Anyway,” he added with a playful smirk, “it would be too bad if I had to send Methredhel instead.”

“Oh!” I said, deliberately casual.  “She got in after all, then?”

“She did.  She insisted she’d actually gotten the journal even though she couldn’t give it to me.”  He chuckled.  “So I gave her another task, and without you here to take that one out from under her, she did just fine.  Honestly, I would have given Amusei another chance too, but he never came back.”

I agreed to the job and set off for Cheydinhal.  I’d never been before, but I’d heard enough about the Dunmer to recognize the feel when I got there.  The buildings were a sweet-looking combination of white plaster and dark wood, and of course there was a higher proportion of dark elves walking the streets than I’d seen elsewhere.  I used some money I’d acquired from a fellow traveler to book a room in the local inn.  In the lobby, a young man who introduced himself as Guilbert Jemane chatted me up while I ate dinner.  He was not unattractive, but he was also a little too earnest for my taste, and blond, so I slept by myself.

Normally there wouldn’t be guards posted in a chapel undercroft, but apparently the Count of Cheydinhal liked to be different, because the Chapel of Arkay’s undercroft had one.  I almost stumbled right into her because I wasn’t expecting anyone to be there.  I ducked into a dark corner, cursed at myself, and vowed to be more mindful of using detection spells rather than making assumptions.

She wasn’t terribly attentive though:  she wasn’t really expecting any trouble.  I quietly waited for her bored ambling to carry her to the opposite end of the undercroft, and then crept with more caution toward the coffin and the bust sitting on top of it.  Out of respect I decided against checking the coffin for valuables, and left with only the bust.

It was the drop that turned out to be the problem.  Lex had stirred up the Imperial Watch against the Guild, I guessed, because they had people posted before and behind Dareloth’s house.  Armand was, wisely, neither there nor in his own house, which meant that I couldn’t find him to deliver the bust.

So I did the only thing I could think of to do:  I dropped in on Methredhel.

She was terribly thrilled to see me.  “Armand told me you’d gotten in.  I guess it was you who took the journal from me, wasn’t it?”  She gave me a very false looking smile.  “Good one.”

I shrugged.  “Nothing personal.  It’s the Thieves’ Guild, not the Asking Politely Guild.  So what’s happening with the Watch?  Where’s Armand?”

“Hiding.  The bust he had you steal wasn’t a normal contract – he’s trying to flush out a spy.  Someone’s been snitching to Lex.”

“That’s great.  Do we have any idea who?”

“Well, he left those tax records here for me to show you.  Notice anything?”

She handed me the papers, and I looked them over.  The name of Myvryna Arano, the old Dunmer woman next door to Methredhel, was conspicuously absent.  “I assume we don’t think this was an oversight,” I said, handing the papers back.  “Or kindness to an old lady.”

Methredhel smirked.  “No, and no.  Pin the theft of the bust on her.  That should get the both of them out of our hair for a while.”

“There are guards all over the place.  I don’t suppose you’d provide me with some sort of distraction for them?”

She sneered.  “It’s too late to start asking politely.”

Oh well.  I camped out in the shadow of the house that used to be mine, and watched the comings and goings of the guards, trying to get a feel for their rhythm.  After a while, I picked my moment to start wandering innocently in that direction.  When I knew no one was looking, I let myself into her house and put the bust of the Countess into her cupboard.

Then I went looking for Lex.  It didn’t take me long to find him, since he was in the neighborhood, personally overseeing his big project. 

He smiled when he saw me.  We’d known each other growing up – he was only a few years older than me.  He’d been the athletic type:  popular for being fairly attractive and fine and upstanding and so on, but not terribly bright. 

“Luminara!  I heard you’d left town.”

For example, he’d never picked up on the fact that I was always a petty thief.  He just felt bad about my father being such a loser.  Since he’d been decent to me, I hadn’t stolen anything from him.  From a couple of his girlfriends, yes.

“I came back,” I said.  “I felt it was my duty.”  I waited for him to raise his eyebrows.  “I know where that bust you’re looking for is.  Myvryna took it.”

“Myvryna?  But she’s my – I mean she couldn’t have.”  He frowned at how he had just barely stopped himself from telling me outright that she was the mole.  “Poor old thing.”

“I saw it when I dropped by to say hello to her.  You know, she always did have that weird fascination with the Count and Countess of Cheydinhal.”

“She… but it’s nonsense.  I… well, come on, we’ll look, but I’m telling you, it can’t have been her.”  He took me by the arm and strode toward Myvryna’s little shack, to which she was just coming home.

We all went in together and stood in a row as Lex opened the cupboard and found the bust sitting there.  Myvryna stammered out denials, along with some accusations that Lex was turning on her.  But the proof was right there, and Lex was compelled by honor to take her away.

That meant that the big search died down, and Armand resurfaced for his usual late-night appointments.  He was more than pleased with me:  he gave me a hundred septims and the name of another fence, this one in Leyawiin.  A city I already knew someone in, damn it, but at least it was a sign of favor.  He also asked where I was staying the night, and told me that the Gray Fox would be there to meet me.

And sure enough, he was.  He was waiting in my room at the Wawnet.

I’d always wondered whether he was ever real.  People had been telling stories about the Gray Fox for so long that no one even remembered the name of the man who’d stolen his mask from Nocturnal herself.  All thoughts of legend or trickery flew out of my head when I saw him, though.  I could _feel_ daedric energy pouring out of the gray cowl and half-face mask he was wearing.  I could recognize the faint blue lettering around the cowl’s edge as daedric writing, even though I couldn’t read it.

It was rather magnetic.

He smiled at me.  “Capital job with the bust.  Now we can return it to Cheydinhal.  Armand said you had an issue with stealing from the dead, so I thought you should know it’s going back home.”

“Oh.  Thank you.”  I hated myself for blushing.

“You show a lot of promise, Luminara,” he said.  His accent seemed Imperial.  “I would like to transfer you to a different doyen – S’krivva, down in Bravil.  I think she’ll be the best one to hone your particular set of talents.”

“But Othrelos wanted me to – ” I cut myself short when I realized that I was arguing with the Gray Fox about my position in his Guild.

“Hmm?  What’s this about Othrelos?  Know him well?”

“Um, yes.”  I shuffled one foot uncomfortably.  “He was very keen for me to work with Armand in particular.  I’m sure S’krivva is fantastic, though.”  I cleared my throat.  “Really he wanted me to keep clear of Fathis Ules.”

“Oh, Fathis.  Yes.”  A mild disdain crept into his voice.  “I assure you that Fathis does not want to run afoul of S’krivva.  She is very much in charge of Bravil.”

“I’ll go.  Thank you.”

He smiled again.  “She’ll like you, I think.  You’ll advance quickly there.”

We stood there silently for a moment.  Perhaps he’d expected me to respond, but I had no other words.  He seemed to look at me strangely. 

“What is it?” I finally asked.

“You just, you look a little bit like – it’s not important.”  He shook off whatever thought had been troubling him.  “Armand knows I’m moving you, so go ahead and report to S’krivva as soon as you like.  Keep doing well, and we will see each other again.”

He went casually out my door into the hall, and I wondered how he was going to slip past everyone downstairs.  Perhaps by taking off the mask.  When I thought of that, I went out myself, curious to see his real face.  But as I looked down at the late-night rabble still in the tavern area, I couldn’t seem to remember what he had been wearing other than the cowl, so I never spotted him.

 


	5. Come On, Girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luminara gets reassigned to S'Krivva, who sends her on a job that will involve catering to an Altmer woman with very particular tastes. (sex chapter)

So, Bravil.

Bravil was a dump.  It was a random array of poorly built wooden shacks, even the largest buildings, and its part of the Niben Bay was murky and smelled faintly of sewage. On one hand, I imagined it would be easy to get away with almost anything here – the city guard seemed rather inattentive.  On the other hand, I couldn’t imagine that anyone here was worth robbing.

This was where the Gray Fox wanted me, rather than in the Imperial City, because of my “particular set of talents.”  Maybe he hadn’t been so impressed with me after all. 

When I reached S’krivva’s house the door was unlocked, but it was dark inside.  I stepped in and called her name, and a gravelly voice answered.  “Ah.  The prey approaches.”

I stopped dead in my tracks.  That was a greeting used by both Argonians and Khajiit, and it was not a friendly one.  “I’m Luminara,” I said.  “The Gray Fox sent me.”

“Yes.  I expected you.”  She emerged quietly from the darkness, a golden lioness in a red dress.  “You’re to be trained to bigger jobs, more guarded places.  And you’re to be kept clear of Fathis Ules and his little faction.”

The Gray Fox had paid more attention to my misgivings than I’d thought.  “You know that?”

“I know many things.”  She looked down her feline nose at me proudly.  “You think you have been punished, tucked away in this miserable backwater.  In fact I am the most powerful doyen in the Guild.  I am supplier to the Count and his son.  I _own_ Bravil.”  She gave what I supposed was a chuckle.  “Fathis Ules will stay clear of _me._   Filthy Dunmer.”

I wondered if she had ever lived in Morrowind.  That was where the antipathy between the Khajiit and the Dunmer was strongest.

“I already have a little work for you,” she added, “if you think you’re ready.”  I nodded.  “Good.  We have a friend named Ahdarji – her late husband was a fence in the Guild.  Some filthy little street scavenger stole a ring from her, and she is offering a reward for its return.”

_Street scavenger_ was what some Guild members called freelancers.  I nodded again, uncomfortably.  I became less comfortable yet when she told me that Ahdarji was in Leyawiin.  Great, I could stay at the Mages’ Guild and visit with my mother some more.  Or perhaps instead I could gouge my own eyes out with rusty nails.

Of course I said I’d go right away.  S’krivva didn’t seem like someone I wanted to get off on the wrong foot with.

Happily, I got to Leyawiin early enough in the day to seek Ahdarji out first, which put off the decision about whether I was really going to sleep at the Guild hall.  She was another Khajiit, and she was livid.  A mere _Argonian_ had taken her ring.

Amusei, as it turned out.

He’d already been arrested for something else, but she wasn’t satisfied with that:  she wanted the ring back, and she wanted him dead.  I had to remind her of the policy against killing, and she agreed to take off that part, though reluctantly.  “He’s only an Argonian,” she pointed out.  “Less than human, and _much_ less than Khajiit.”

Nice.  Nice kitty.

I went and threw some money and flattering smiles at the prison guard so he would let me visit the prisoners.  I ignored the lecherous cries of the other inmates and went directly to the cell of the lost-looking Argonian.

“Luminara, right?” he said, rising to meet me.  “How funny you showed up here!  Did you make it into the Guild?”

“Say it a little louder,” I frowned, my voice low.  “Yeah, I did.  You never came back, did you?  Armand said he would have let you try again.”

“I don’t need Armand,” he snapped.  “I don’t need the Guild.”

“No, you’re right, you’re doing great on your own.  What are you in for, by the way?”

He sighed.  “Blackmailing the Countess.  I stole this ring, you see, and my fence wouldn’t touch it.  Because it was hers – it said “To Alessia” inside and everything.  So I tried to sell it back to her, and, well.  She doesn’t play nice with Argonians.”

Nor with thieves who tried to sell her back her own property.  Poor, stupid Amusei. 

“Do you have a lockpick I could borrow?” he whispered as I turned to leave.  I glanced around, then pulled one from my hair and gave it to him.  “Thank you,” he grinned.  “I owe you.”  As if I was ever going to need anything from him.

I pondered the problem of stealing “back” Ahdarji’s ring, which was now the problem of robbing the Countess of Leyawiin.  Not that I had an issue with the principle, but the job had just gotten considerably more challenging, and I wasn’t sure how to approach it.  I went into the castle during public hours to have an initial look around.

Mazoga was there, and when she saw me she – well, made the face that Orcs make when they’re happy.  “We” had been given an assignment by the Count, and by “we” she meant the Knights Errant of the White Stallion, by which she meant herself and me.  “We” were to apprehend or eliminate the leader of the Black Bow Bandits, for which “we” would be rewarded with the full status of Knights, including a lodge.

I’d be helping out a friend _and_ getting a place to sleep in Leyawiin that didn’t put me with my mother.  What could be better?

She had already become familiar with Black Brugo’s routine:  he collected his take from his gang nightly at a nearby Ayleid ruin. 

Naturally, that meant the rest of the bandits were there earlier.

As we approached, just before we were spotted, I was thinking how much better it would be if I had any skill with a bow:  I could have climbed up onto one of the ledges and shot down at the bandits from relative safety.  I’d never bothered to learn, although it was one of the things Othrelos knew how to do well.  Even though I knew he was good, he wasn’t enthusiastic about either doing it himself or teaching me.  We’d always focused on breaking and entering.

So it was just me and my sword, and Mazoga, and the creepy white ruin, and bandits.  Not many, luckily.

When we’d taken them down, Mazoga said, “He’ll be inside.  Watch out for him, he hits hard.”

“You seem to know a lot about him.”

Her eyes darted away from me.  “Well.  Yeah.  He and I used to – um, yeah.”

Ah.  “Is this job going to make you uncomfortable?”

“Oh, no.  He was a jerk.”

Since Mazoga was no good at sneaking anyway, I made light for us.  That attracted the other bandits as we made our way through the ruin, but happily, she was also a good fighter.

We found the chest in which they’d put Brugo’s take before we found Brugo.  “We, ah – ”  I wanted to be tactful with Mazoga.  “The Count won’t need the money.  You don’t mind if I use it to pay my friend’s debt, do you?”

Mazoga thought for a moment.  “I guess not.  It’s not like they’ll know whose it was to give it back.  But we’ll have to wait for him to bring the key.”

“I can – ”  Oops, no, I couldn’t.  Not as far as Mazoga knew, and it was probably best to keep it that way.  “I can wait.”  I looked at her as she stood right in the doorway.  “We’ll probably want to wait for him in, you know, a less obvious spot.  Hide until he gets here.”

“Oh,” she said, and let me lead her into the shadows.

Brugo was burly even for an Orc, and escorted by two other bandits.  Brugo went after Mazoga first, and the other two came to me.  They weren’t especially skilled fighters, though, so I managed to cut them both down and come to help Mazoga.  A good thing, because Brugo wasn’t going down half as easily:  it took the two of us several good blows each before he fell.  Blasted daedric armor was hard to cut through.

It was going to fetch a good price, though, even damaged.  And his glass sword was lovely.  I thought I might even keep it for myself.

Mazoga had been the one in front of him, and she was hurt – a cut to her shoulder.  I pulled a potion out of her sack for her, and she nodded and drank it.  I stripped Brugo of valuables, and his key.

“I’ll carry the bows from the rest of them,” she said once she was better.  “Count said he would pay us a bounty for them.”

Why hadn’t she mentioned that before?  Now we’d have to check all the bodies on the way back out.  I shrugged and used the key – artless though that was – to get Brugo’s money.  Three hundred.  I was closing in on having the debt paid in full.

It turned out that the “Black Bow Bandits” really did have black bows.  We collected half a dozen of them as we retraced our steps.  By morning we staggered wearily into the castle and presented them to the Count, Marius Caro, a balding little man who looked ludicrous in the amount of velvet and fur he was wearing.

He was thrilled with us, though, and named us Knights, and gave us keys to the lodge, and paid us another three hundred septims each for the bows, with a promise of more if we brought in more bows.  Mazoga beamed at the prospect:  I could easily imagine her making a living at killing bandits from now on and being happy.

But I had other things to think about, and besides, that was the moment when I got to meet the Countess of Leyawiin.  She strolled in haughtily with her Altmeri handmaiden in tow, as lavishly dressed as her husband but looking less ridiculous.  In fact she was a reasonably attractive brunette, although nothing spectacular.  As the Count explained us to her, she looked first and longest at me, with calculated indifference.  Then she glanced over at Mazoga, and her expression became one of scorn, and that spread back to me by association.

“Wonderful that we’re re-establishing the Knighthood, darling,” she drawled, a false smile playing across her face.  “You will both have to join us at the Chapel sometime.  We go to the evening service.  I’m sure you will both find something…more appropriate to wear.”

Oh, yes.  I could steal the ring back from her.  My pleasure.

But there was still the problem of how.  I decided I would take her up on her invitation, and see if I could find out any more about her usual routines and the location of the ring.  I used a little of my considerable profits to get a nice dress, and then I went to take a nap at the lodge.  As I settled in, I thought about Othrelos.  Adding in what we’d gotten together in Skingrad, I was sure I could pay him in full the next time I saw him.

Would he keep coming to meet me after that?  Where was it he was spending all his time now, anyway?

I’d picked a black dress.  Black dress, gray hair.  Drama.  I wanted to strike my audience as someone who cleaned up nicely and was worth engaging in conversation.  In the evening, I put it on and went to the Chapel of Zenithar.  The Count and Countess turned and smiled politely when I entered.  I sat a few rows back, with the handmaiden.

Her name was Hlidara, and she was an easier friend to make than her lady.  She told me they were just back from a visit to Chorrol:  the Countess there was Alessia’s mother.  She shared her relief about the return of the beloved ring, which Alessia only took off at night.

I kept coming to Chapel.  Not every evening, since I didn’t want to be too obvious, but more evenings than not.  Hlidara opened up to me.  She confided her discomfort with the “severe immigration policy” in Leyawiin regarding Black Marsh, the native home of the Argonians.  _She_ didn’t entirely approve of the interrogation techniques used on captured immigrants, or understand her lady’s fascination with them.  _She_ never used the passage that linked the torture chamber in the cellar to the living quarters.  Still, she was sure the Count and Countess knew best.

She said it all with a peculiar little smile that made me skeptical.  Her eyes lit up a little too much at the mention of torture for me to think she didn’t approve or participate, and not for political reasons, either.

No…she was measuring _my_ response.  Looking me over.  I made my face bland, so as to neither alarm her by taking too much offense nor encourage her to invite me – well.  Then again.

I flickered my eyes downward shyly, let the corners of my mouth creep up just a tiny bit.

She breathed a little heavier.  “Of course,” she whispered, “it’s true that some people engage in that sort of thing for entirely different reasons.”

I raised my eyes only as far as her mouth.  “I imagine that’s true.  I wonder what it’s like.”  I decided to take a little more risk, to play through my guess that the gleam in her eye was a sadistic one.  “To _let_ someone hurt you, on purpose.”

“Some people like it very much,” she smiled.  “I hear.”

It only took one more visit to the Chapel to get a more direct confession that she knew this as the person who did the hurting – of the Countess herself, among others – and that she was quite willing to initiate me into the practice.  She arranged our date in the castle’s torture chamber and told me where the secret entrance from the cellar was.  Perfect.

I hid my sack in a barrel in the cellar, since it wouldn’t do to have Hlidara see it and ask about it.  In another barrel was the switch for the secret door, and I moved cautiously down the passage.  I didn’t want to be seen before I knew everything was as it should be.

I needn’t have worried.  All the shackles on the wall were currently empty, there were no guards, and the only person waiting for me was Hlidara, in a more extreme version of the fashion she preferred: a tight shirt with a band just under her bust to accentuate her shape, and a straight skirt.  This particular shirt was tighter and lower cut than the ones she wore to Chapel, so as to reveal what she had of cleavage, although she was tall and lean rather than rounded.  Her skin was pale for an Altmer, even milky.

She greeted me with a predatory smile.  “So you didn’t lose courage at the last moment.  Excellent.”  She kissed me lightly.  “Now,” she whispered, “let’s get you out of those bothersome clothes and into some shackles.”

“No shackles,” I said.  I didn’t trust her that much:  I didn’t want to disappear forever in this hole.

She traced a finger teasingly along my jaw.  “But you would like them.  The Countess likes them.”

I answered with a coy smile.  “The Countess lives here.  This is only my first time.”

She ran the finger down the center of my chest and belly, her eyes following.  “Well.  It means you’ll have to follow instructions very carefully, dear little girl.  We wouldn’t want anyone getting hurt in the wrong way.”

I nodded, and she stepped back from me.  “Get undressed, then.  Slowly.”

She’d told me to wear something easy to remove, so I was in a two-piece red outfit.  I opened the shirt and slowly eased it down over my shoulders, eyes down as if I was feeling bashful.  I knew how this sort of game was played.  She watched with a growing hunger in her eyes as I slipped out of the skirt and then ran my hands slowly up my hips as if I’d never noticed them before.

She licked her lips and smiled a little.  “Now, over to the wall.”  I complied, and she approached and ran her hands over me, assessing.  I gave her an encouraging little sigh when she pinched my nipples, and she smiled wider as I started to shiver.  The shiver was genuine:  it was cold in the chamber, and the Altmer woman towered over me.  The whole atmosphere was orchestrated to make me feel helpless and under her sexual power, and it was working.

“Pinch them yourself,” she said, and I raised my hands to my breasts for her.  I rubbed at them and watched her watching me, and I could feel myself starting to breathe faster.

“Don’t stop,” she ordered, and walked away from me for a moment, returning with a tool in each hand.  “What do you think – single tail, or the crop?”

Looking at the implements of my destruction while fondling myself for show was rather arousing, and it was hard to collect myself enough to answer quickly.  “Which one does the Countess prefer?”

“The single tail.”

“Then I would like the crop.”

She lashed the single tail once against the floor, and the snap echoed around us.  “From this point forward you will call me Mistress, and you will say please.”

Oh, she was good at this.  “The crop, please, Mistress.”

She dropped the single tail with a chuckle.  “You don’t like the Countess, do you?”

“Does anyone, Mistress?”

She sneered.  “No.  Turn around and put your hands on the wall.”  I did so, and she came up close behind me.  “Spread your legs a little.”  When they were parted, she reached up between them with the crop and brushed the tip against me gently.  Then she tapped it a few times against the insides of my thighs.  That seemed to wake up the whole area in a very appealing way, and I sighed with pleasure.

“That’s it,” she purred.  “You’ve got lovely pale skin, my dear.  Let’s give it a little color.”  She gave my ass a quick, light smack with the crop, making me gasp.  That was followed by a long series of moderate strokes, switching now and again from one side to the other.  Her pace and strength were quite even, but all the same the sensation moved from tingling to stinging, and then to burning.  I leaned my forehead against the wall, panting.

There was the slightest pause, and then the next blow came much harder, a loud, painful slap.  I cried out through my clenched teeth, and she paused again.

“You’re a biter, then,” she said.  “Here.”  She reached around my face with a twisted kerchief, nudged my mouth open, and wedged it between my jaws.  I felt her tie the ends behind my neck to hold it in place, forcing my mouth to remain open. 

“There.  You can bite, and I can hear you better.  Don’t be shy, now.”  With that, she delivered another hard smack, one I could hear even over my own yelp.  The twisted fabric in my mouth was thick enough that my bite could not flatten it, and my lips stayed open and stretched, letting her hear the sounds she wanted.  No more “please” and “Mistress,” though, with my tongue trapped.  Just the cries as she beat me.

The last few strikes were brutal ones.  And yet, the pain also continued to feed the happier response of other flesh nearby, and I was trembling as much with arousal and longing as with pain.

Finally she stopped, and raked her nails slowly down my back.  “Lovely,” she said.  Her nails came to the skin she had been abusing, and I gave a loud gasp that made her giggle.

“Lie down on the floor,” she ordered.  That involved sitting first.  Ow, ow, ow.  I laid back on the cold stone as quickly as I could, hoping to take off some of the pressure, but that was only of limited help, and my eyes started to water.  I lifted myself up a little bit with my feet, but she pushed me back down flush on the ground, then pulled my knees apart and knelt between them.

She had discarded the crop and picked up the single tail whip, holding the thick end of the handle forward.  “Now, little one,” she smiled, “I’d like to see you come.  Make yourself come for me.”

I snaked one hand down toward my clit, and she nodded in approval.  As I started to rub, she slid the handle of the whip into me and started working it back and forth, and I bucked my hips up again and moaned.  I was already worked up, and it was hard to control myself enough to keep my fingers moving, but she stared down at me insistently, fucking me with her weapon.  My arms and legs shook, and I arched back and started screaming and sobbing.

“Stop,” she said, and pulled the handle out of me, stroking it along my thigh before she put the whip aside.  She sat and watched me as the shaking and sobbing gradually faded, with a peaceful and satisfied look on her face.

“Did you like that?” she asked.  I nodded.  “You’ll find it easier to get up from your stomach.”  After I rolled over and lifted myself onto my knees, she untied the kerchief, and I let it fall to the floor, cold and wet.  Closing my lips again felt alien.

She continued to watch and smile as I slowly put my clothes back on.  “I think you could have handled the single tail, actually.  Perhaps another time.”

After a few other idle, out-of-place pleasantries, I staggered back the way I had come and into the shadows in the cellar.  There I would sit – no, stand – and wait for a couple of hours.  Then I collected my sack from its hiding place and crept back up to the chamber again, then through the passage up to the private quarters of the darling Countess.  She turned out to have lots of pretty jewelry besides the ring.

I sold most of it to Dar Jee, my new official fence, for the sake of appearances, although I saved a couple of things for Weebam Na to stave off my feelings of disloyalty.  Then I took the ring to Ahdarji, who both paid me and promised glowing reviews of my performance to S’krivva.

That meant I was free to leave Leyawiin again, for which I was deeply grateful.

 


	6. You Only Think About Yourself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With a few more jobs and another meeting with the Gray Fox, Luminara has the rest of the money for Othrelos, but doesn't get the reaction she was expecting. She drowns her sorrows in pirates. (sex chapter)

“I’ll be leaving town again,” I told Mazoga.

“I figured.  You seem like the restless type.”  She made the face that came closest to an Orc smile, a big toothy grimace.  “Come back around sometime.  It was fun.”

“I will.”

She thought for a moment.  “Have you told your mother you’re going?”  She frowned at me for rolling my eyes.  “I know you don’t get along, but it’s still proper.  Go talk to her.”

“Fine, but I’m only doing it because you’re so much bigger than me.”

Mazoga laughed.  Sure, easy for her:  she’d never even met my mother.  “Why don’t you come along?” I asked.  She agreed.

Like I said, she’d never met my mother.

Everyone else was cordial to both me and Mazoga, and complimentary about our recent promotion to Knighthood.  Agata even seemed _proud_ of me, which was a strange sensation for both of us.  My mother, on the other hand, looked more inconvenienced than happy when they called her down the stairs to see us.

“So,” she said.  “I suppose I’m expected to congratulate you for becoming a thug who goes out and kills people for a living.  With an Orc.”

Mazoga grunted in displeasure.  “Wanted criminals, mother,” I clarified.

“Oh, fabulous.  That makes it much more ladylike, then.”

Agata scowled at her.  “They did Leyawiin a service, Yvette.  _Most_ people appreciate them for it.”

“Thank you, but don’t bother,” I said to Agata under my breath.  Then to my mother, “Actually, I’m going to be leaving again.  I have other matters to attend to.”

“Of course, off again.  Will you be taking your girlfriend with you?”

Mazoga was staring at her wide-eyed; her fingers curled around the hilt of her sword, but then she glanced at me and loosened her grip.  “She’s not my girlfriend, mother,” I said.

“No?  At least I know for sure that you won’t show up here unmarried and pregnant.”

I had to bite my tongue, hard.  No, I wasn’t going to show up pregnant.  Ever.  It was physically impossible.  One of her little tavern buddies had seen to that ten years ago, back when she used to cart her little girl around to seedy places and then ignore me for hours while she flirted and drank.  Not that I was going to tell her that now when she wouldn’t even have cared at the time.

And she was a fine one to talk about “unmarried and pregnant,” anyway.

“Fine, Yvette,” I snarled.  “You’re right, she is my girlfriend.  And being a Knight is really just my cover for joining the Dark Brotherhood, because I just love killing people that much.  Now, if you don’t mind, I’m off to assassinate Chancellor Ocato.  Watch the papers!”

Mazoga followed me as I stormed out of the Guild hall.  “Wow,” she said.  “You weren’t kidding, were you?  Sorry I brought it up.”

“That’s about what I thought you’d say.”  I clapped her on the shoulders.  “Not your fault, don’t worry about it.  I’ll drop by when I’m in town again.”

Back up in Bravil, S’krivva greeted me more nicely:  now I was regarded as a hunter rather than prey.  “Here is your payment.  There is more work right away, and it is important.  You come from the Waterfront originally, yes?”  I nodded, since it was close enough to true.  “Hieronymus Lex is plaguing it again, and business there has shut down completely.  The Gray Fox himself is safely away, but the siege must be broken.  Methredhel has been charged with coordinating the effort:  go and talk to her.”

Oh, good.  Methredhel loved me.

She wasn’t home.  That was for the best, of course, since the whole Waterfront was swarming with Imperial Watchmen.  Lex had taken extra men from everywhere else in the city for the effort.  The people who weren’t under active house arrest were mostly hiding in their shacks anyway.

I went into the Temple District instead, where a beggar directed me to a house in Talos Plaza where Methredhel was hiding, waiting for me.  The plan, apparently, was to show up the folly of concentrating so much of the Imperial Watch in the Waterfront by pulling a rapid-fire series of robberies across the rest of the city.  The job I’d been assigned, she told me with a decidedly malicious grin, was to steal a frost staff from the private quarters of the Arch-Mage.

I’d robbed her house in Bruma, sure, but that was different.  Everybody knew that she’d barely set foot there since the Oblivion crisis, back when she was the Dragonborn’s eyes, ears, and hands in Tamriel.  Along with other things, according to rumor, which might explain why people were now starting to whisper that she’d gone crazy.  A crazy Arch-Mage, and a Destruction mage, no less.  And at any rate, possessed of an infamous temper even when sane.  And I was to leave a note there from the Gray Fox, to make sure she knew we’d done it. 

A quick survey of local gossip established that she wasn’t in the Imperial City currently, so at least I had that going for me.  It wasn’t as if she would be able to connect the crime to me personally unless I got caught, right?  Surely the Gray Fox wouldn’t give me up.  Right?

_Purloined Shadows_ aside?  I wasn’t the distraction, was I?

With the Watch distracted, it was shockingly easy to pass unnoticed into the Arch-Mage’s tower, and none of the mages were there in the wee hours of the morning.  I made my way up through the disturbing portals the tower had instead of stairs.  In the top floor was a nice little apartment, obviously seldom used.  There wasn’t much there by way of personal items:  the staff I was supposed to take was lying on top of an empty chest.

As simple as that.  I wondered if anyone was even going to notice the thing was gone.

I read the note before I deposited it:

_It seems that security in the Arcane University is not what it used to be. In fact, that seems to be a problem all over the Imperial City. I would recommend that you get your guards back on duty unless you want more of your precious artifacts to go missing. –_

_The Gray Fox_

When I brought the staff to Methredhel and told her my doubts, she smiled.  “Oh, they’ll notice.  They keep everything extra tidy up there in case she ever does come around.  In fact, I bet that will be the one that clinches it for us.  We should keep an eye out for the reaction.  Go watch Lex for us.”

She loved being in a position to boss me around.  I went ahead, though, because I did want to see whether the plan worked or not.  It didn’t actually take long:  the sun hadn’t been up two hours when the lone daedra came striding toward Lex and his men.

People outside of the Mages’ Guild never did like to see that sort of thing in the best of times, and this soon after the Oblivion crisis it caused even more of a stir.  The other watchmen were running around in a panic until the daedra calmly handed its folded note to Lex and then vanished.

As the chaos died down, Lex read the note, crumpled it and threw it down on the ground, clearly dismayed.  Then he collected himself, and with a wave of one arm, called the guards to move out of the Waterfront.

I was too curious not to read it myself.

_Hieronymus Lex,_

_Your vendetta against the Gray Fox has cost the Arcane University dearly. You commandeered the guards patrolling our property. In their absence, someone stole a valuable artifact from the University. We demand that you return all guards to their posts immediately. If you do not do this, we will be forced to bring the matter to the attention of your superior._

__  
Raminus Polus  
The Arcane University

Raminus Polus was second in command at the University.  We had indeed gotten their attention.  If anything, I was worried we would end up having too much of it.

But again, Methredhel was unconcerned by my report.  “We’re giving it back,” she explained.  “The University can pretend it never happened, the Arch-Mage doesn’t get mad at them, and they don’t stay mad at us.  It’s all part of the plan.”

“Good.  And I’m sure they’ll just take it back from me happily with no questions asked.”

“Of course you won’t do it directly.  You’re going to drop it with a retired mage named Ontus Vanin, and _he’s_ going to take it back.  Just don’t be seen leaving it there.”

That wasn’t difficult either, but this time, I didn’t stay around to see the effect.  I headed back down to Bravil to report to S’krivva and get my pay.

It wasn’t S’krivva who sat in her chair when I arrived, though:  it was the Gray Fox.  “You’re creating quite a name for yourself,” he smiled.  “Not everyone would have accepted such a rash order, even from me.”

I grinned.  “Well, it was annoying to answer to Methredhel – ”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say you were _answering_ to her.  She was just the messenger.  The courier.  That’s the job she’s being trained to.”

“But I like a bit of challenge.  It’s why I do this in the first place.”

“Capital.”  He stood up and regarded me with eyes full of enthusiasm.  “S’krivva’s pleased with your progress as well.  Keep working for her while I finish my research.”

I raised my eyebrows.  “Research?”

“I’m forming, well, something of a plan, and I am going to need someone very accomplished and very daring to help me carry it out.  If it will work at all.  If what I think is correct.”  What I could see of his face seemed to darken for a moment.  “If it isn’t, I don’t know what I’ll do,” he added quietly, more to himself than to me.  “I don’t know what will be left.”

Suddenly he seemed lost, alone.  Without thinking, I put a hand on his chest.  That startled him, and his pale eyes snapped to mine as he gasped.  But neither of us moved.

“I’m sorry,” he said at last.  “I was thinking out loud.  I… don’t spend much time with other people any more.”

“It’s all right.  I’m sure that whatever you’re trying to plan, you will succeed.  You’re a legend.”

He sighed.  “It is not so intoxicating as you might think to be a legend.  It, it isn’t – ”

I kissed him.  Somehow, adding vulnerability into his aura of power made him that much more attractive.  His lips went on trying to form the next word for just a second before he realized he was being kissed.  Then he moaned softly, closing his eyes as one hand came up to touch the curve of my back.

But then he pulled back from me.  “No,” he said.  “We mustn’t let ourselves be distracted.  If I am _right_ , Luminara, then we are about to embark on the greatest quest either of us will ever take, and our names – ” there was the faintest wince there – “will live forever.”

I didn’t quite see why that meant we couldn’t touch each other, but I respected his retreat.  The moment having passed, he gave me my payment and the name of S’krivva’s own fence in Bravil, Luciana Galena.

Not that I saw much point in using her, since I couldn’t imagine there was anything in Bravil worth stealing.  I still had a bit of time before my appointment in Skingrad, so I decided I would try hitting the opposite of Bravil:  Chorrol.

 I arrived late enough in the day that I saw to paying for a room first.  The pub in the downstairs section of the Gray Mare was lively with drunk and desperate men, including – “Guilbert?”

The blond man slammed his tankard down angrily, and even that gesture made him wobble.  “No, no, no!  I’m not him, and he’s not me!  I’m me, and he’s…well, I don’t know who he is.  But he should stay out of my business!”

I sat across from him and tried to calm him down.  “Of course.  Of course you’re not Guilbert.  You’re…” I trailed off.

“Reynald,” he answered, “right.  People keep asking why they saw me in Cheydinhal.  I’m _not_ in Cheydinhal, am I?  No.  I want you to go.”  He paused to suppress a belch.  “I want you to find this impostor who is besmirching my good name.  Tell him I am perfectly capable of…of besmirching my own good name.” 

“Sure.  I’ve got a little business of my own first, but next time I’m in Cheydinhal I’ll sort that out for you.”  I studied him for a moment.  If this wasn’t really Guilbert being a crazy drunk, then the resemblance between the two men was uncanny.

So I stayed to chat for a few more minutes.  He said he’d lived in Chorrol for as long as he could remember – although he was drunk enough that “as long as he could remember” seemed to be about five minutes.  He’d been raised at the nearby Priory, an orphan.  He had a little house in town, but he spent most of his time here.

It was funny.  His double in Cheydinhal had been too staid and sober to raise my interest, but Reynald was not sober enough.  After we talked a little about who was well off in Chorrol and what their usual habits were, I went off to bed.

In the morning, when all the wholesome folk were about their business, I went to find the house of Rimalus and Rena Bruiant, who spent most of the day away from home, playing with their dogs.  It was on the circle around the great oak in the middle of town, which meant its main entrance was rather exposed:  but I had gotten quite good at choosing my route and my moment.

A few items of interest on the main floor, but nothing spectacular.  I started to search upstairs.  Someone stepped out from behind the bedroom door, and blocked the fist I raised in response. 

It was Othrelos.  “Why are you in Chorrol?” he hissed.

“What – why are _you_ in Chorrol?”

“Never mind that.  Fathis is here.  You shouldn’t be.”

I was getting tired of this.  “O, I’m in the Guild now.  I’m under S’krivva, and everyone is scared of her.  I’ve talked to the Gray Fox himself.  There’s nothing Fathis can do to me.  Besides that, I have the rest of the money I owe you, in case that was a problem.  I can give it to you right now.”  I reached for it.

He held my hand to keep me from giving it to him, pressed his forehead against mine, and closed his eyes.  “I don’t want it now, Lum.  That’s not the point.  The point is that he’s a sneaky bastard, and he holds a grudge.  Don’t come this close to him.  Don’t give him an opening.”

I sighed.  “Fine.  Then I’ll go after I’ve finished here.”  With a playful smirk I added, “Do you want to do it together?  Like Skingrad?”

He held both of my wrists now.  “No.  You shouldn’t stay that long.”

This was ridiculous.  I appealed to my ace in the hole, pressing my body up against his and letting him feel my breath on his neck.  “Not even for a little while?  You aren’t just slightly glad to see me?”

Instead of responding the way I wanted, he shook me once and glared.  “Damn it, not everything revolves around what you want!”  He stopped to gasp, as if he was as startled by his own harshness as I was.  “Your being here at all is a hazard,” he growled, “and every moment you stay makes it worse.  If you want to pay me back, do it by leaving _now._ ”

I didn’t know what to say to that, how to feel about it.  He’d never spoken to me like that, never, not even when I’d done something he didn’t like.  I stood and gaped at him for a moment.

Then I said, “All right, then,” and I turned on my heel and left, and went out of Chorrol immediately.

I fumed over it all the way down to Anvil.  Never once in all the time I’d known him.  Never had he said anything so _spiteful._   “Pay me by leaving.”  Fine.  _Fine._   I was gone, and he could go back to obsessively spying on Fathis or whatever it was that he was doing with his time.

Zedrick and Khafiz were in our cave, sitting across from each other over an empty crate covered with beer bottles.  “Is this all you’ve done since I’ve been gone?” I asked.

Zedrick snorted.  “I’ve got a ship.  I know where to get a crew, but I’d have to have some money to lure them over, and the main way I know how to get it, I can’t do without them.”

“If somebody financed you, would you pay them a cut of your takes?”

He raised his eyebrows at me.  “Happily.”

“Good.  Let’s go and see how many pirates I can afford.”

The answer was two.  Zedrick took me to a docked ship named the Sea Tub Clarabella, where he knew the first mate.  She was a Redguard woman, and she said she knew where to get the people we needed.  We paid her for a supplier and a lock expert – if we weren’t doing this all in one go, we might as well start with the ones that would be the most use to me – and with what was left of my money, I also convinced her to outfit my cabin with appropriate furnishings.  She was excellently quick:  the whole lot showed up the next day.

Tahm Blackwell was a balding Imperial who had devoted his years to opening what other people wanted closed.  He brought scrolls and potions devoted to breaking locks magically, and a set of practice lock boxes for improving the natural skill. 

Jak Silver, a younger Imperial man, seemed to know how to get hold of almost anything.  And he was also rather attractive for a blond – rougher and more angular than Guilbert, with more mischief in his face.  He and Zedrick seemed to know each other, as well.

So that was a crew of four counting Zedrick and Khafiz, which was still only half of what he needed, but he was in high spirits as we all drank together.  He was surprised that I wasn’t.

“What are you so mad about?” he finally asked as he opened his third beer.

“I spent months getting that money for someone, and he just – gah.”  I waved my bottle angrily.  “Been friends for years.  I don’t know why he had to – so fine, so I kept the money, and I left!  Just like he told me to!”

One edge of his mouth quirked up.  “Friends, were you?”

“Of a certain sort.”  Now I was even less happy.

He and Jak exchanged a suddenly cheerful look, and then Zedrick leaned over toward me.  “Well, I know what you need to do, then.”

Khafiz rolled his eyes as I asked, “What?”

Zedrick murmured the answer into my ear.  “Me and Jak.”

I giggled.  “Oh really!  That’s going to help?”

“You’ll feel lots better.  It’ll serve him right, won’t it?”

On one hand, I wasn’t sure it would “serve him right,” since we’d never had any exclusive arrangement in the first place.  I wasn’t convinced he would have cared.  But they were both handsome men, and it did sound like an appealing distraction.

“I do have the new bed to break in,” I muttered.

The three of us rose from our seats, and I led the way into the ship and up to my cabin.  It was now nicely appointed with a wardrobe, table, and a bed big enough to accommodate a guest.  Or two, if we weren’t actually sleeping.

“I take it the two of you have done this before,” I purred.

Another lopsided grin from Zedrick.  “Maybe.”  He turned me to face him, and Jak stepped up behind me.

“I haven’t,” I said.  “So you take the lead.”

He leaned down to kiss me, and at the same time I felt Jak’s lips touch the back of my neck.  If I’d had any doubts about this idea, they were gone.  I gasped and closed my eyes as their hands started to wander over me.  Jak chuckled at my response and started to nip at my skin gently:  Zedrick’s tongue entered my mouth to quiet me.  With my eyes shut I lost track of who was touching me where, which hands were opening and removing my shirt.

That was strangely exciting, but I was losing the opportunity to watch them, and they were both pretty, so I opened my eyes again.  I took off Zedrick’s shirt and ran my fingertips over his muscular torso.  Jak’s hands cupped my breasts, and he pulled me back close against him.  I felt his skin on mine; he must have taken his own shirt off while I wasn’t paying attention.  I could hear him panting in my ear as Zedrick knelt in front of me and started peeling off the rest of my clothes.  I wriggled a bit in anticipation, but Jak held me in place.

With a huge grin, Zedrick brought one hand up between my legs, pushing them slightly apart.  He splayed his fingers, coaxing my lips apart, and started to lick and rub at my clit with an intensity that made me yelp.  Jak sucked marks into the side of my neck and pinched at my nipples.  Trapped between them, I arched back against Jak’s chest, growling and moaning.  The arousal was making it hard to stand, and being forced to stand anyway was frustrating, and being frustrated was arousing.  Soon I was howling in earnest as my legs shook under me.

Zedrick took hold of my hands and pulled me down toward him, and Jak pressed down on my shoulders.  Zedrick opened his trousers and pulled my head to his cock.  I teased it a few times with the tip of my tongue before sucking it into my mouth, which made him hum and take hold of my hair.  I was on my hands and knees, and Jak’s hands ran over my back and my ass as I bobbed slightly back and forth in my work.  After a moment I felt him enter me from behind – thicker than Zedrick, and I welcomed him with a muffled groan. 

My nerves were all dancing and my skin was on fire.  Jak’s pace was strong but not frantic, and his fingers clutched hard into my hips in just the way I liked.  I stroked my tongue greedily up and down Zedrick’s cock, making him hiss and rasp for me.  He gave first, deep back in my throat, making the swallow obligatory.  Then he yanked up on my hair to pull me up onto my knees, my face to his.  While we kissed again, our juices mingling on our lips, Jak started to pound into me more fiercely, and soon he had come as well.

We all leaned together wearily for a moment, back to many hands stroking along my skin, now with less urgency.

With one last grab at my breasts, Jak said, “You’d have a crew a lot faster if you made it known this was part of the regular pay.”

I clucked my tongue.  “At least wait until you’re outside my cabin to start being an ass.”

Zedrick laughed, and looked at me as he refastened his trousers.  “So, back to drinking?”

“No, I think I’ll go to bed.  You two go on.”

They gathered their things and left, and I looked up at the bed next to me, which we hadn’t bothered to break in at all.  I climbed up into it and lay there as the last of the sensations died down.  It was the most intense experience I’d ever had.  That made it even more frustrating how my mind went right back to the way I’d parted from Othrelos.

 


	7. What is the Mystery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luminara is careless about Chorrol one too many times, and is found by the one person Othrelos was so insistent she avoid - Fathis Ules.

This time I spent several days in what we were apparently calling Dunbarrow Cove.  I practiced on Tahm’s lockboxes, got acquainted with Khafiz’s pet boar, played with the boys a couple more times.  Zedrick was the only one worth bothering to talk to afterward:  while I learned that Jak didn’t really mean to be an ass, he wasn’t very interesting either.

But since my sexual favors actually _weren’t_ going to be part of the regular pay for everyone, I needed to go out and get the money to hire the rest of our crew.  Anyway, it was almost the seventh of the month, and time to meet Othrelos in Skingrad.  I wanted to know why he’d been so short with me, and whether it was likely to happen again.  I wanted things to be right between us – although I did hope he wasn’t going to change his mind again about the money, now that I’d spent it elsewhere. 

I shouldn’t have worried.  I arrived early and stayed a day late, but never saw him.  Whatever his problem with me was, it was worse than I’d thought.  Bad enough to wipe away years of – I hadn’t even _done_ anything!

Eventually I gave up and made my way back to Bravil, but the disappointment followed me.  Suddenly realizing that I could actually lose Othrelos’s friendship made me feel more keenly how all-pervasive it had been, my one support system.  I had depended on him to be there, more than I ever had on anyone else.  How stupid of me.

I was feeling quite sulky by the time I reached S’krivva, and then she told me to turn right around and go back to Skingrad, where the thief who’d been sent after a book for the Gray Fox’s “research” had gone missing.  The thief, Theranis, was ultimately expendable, but the book, _The Lost Histories of Tamriel_ , was not.

So back I went to the city that now hurt my feelings a little.  It didn’t take long to bribe the story out of a beggar:  Theranis had gotten the book out of Castle Skingrad, but then had made the mistake of bragging about it at the Two Sisters Lodge rather than leaving town right away.  And the even bigger mistake of doing it while an off-duty guard was in the room.  Now he was in jail, and being denied visitors.

That was going to make matters a bit more difficult.  But a bit more asking around town revealed that the Count’s butler, Shum gro-Yarug, might be hiring people for temporary work.  I talked to him and got myself what he considered the worst of the jobs he had to offer, but for me was the plum:  “slop drudge,” in charge of taking meals down to the prisoners.

He even paid me.  Not much, to be sure.

There was only one prisoner down in the cells, and it turned out not to be Theranis.  “Pft, you can’t be surprised,” he said in response to my look.  “Nobody lasts long down here.  It’s the Pale Lady.”

I’d already heard that many prisoners in Skingrad never came out again – the Count’s harshness against crime, most people said, a deterrent.  I’d never heard a word about a “pale lady.”  I stepped in closer to the bars.  “Tell me what you know about Theranis,” I murmured, “and I’ll let you out of here.”

Some odd mix of relief and terror washed over his features, and the story tumbled out of him quickly.  The Pale Lady came at night, took people from their cells, and then deposited them again before dawn.  Three times, and then the prisoners never came back again.  Theranis had been taken for his third time days ago, and now another prisoner, an Argonian, had been taken for his first.  The Argonian had struggled, and there were blood stains still on the floor.

An Argonian male, dragged away kicking and screaming by a small, pale woman.  Something was really wrong.

True to my word, I picked the lock on the cell door and left it slightly ajar, suggesting that he wait until I had gone to make his escape.  He whispered thanks to me over and over again as I began to follow the trail of blood splatters.  It led me down through a series of secret passages that might have been harder to find had I not trained my eye to that sort of thing, or had there not been this red path laid out so clearly.

I passed through the false back of a wine cask, down one last hallway, and into the room where the Pale Lady was already waiting for me.  “Pale” was clearly a relative term:  she’d been an elderly Dunmer woman when she’d been bitten, her skin an ashy light blue-gray and her hair white.  She hissed at me, her sunken face full of hatred and fear – fear, because I was healthy, free, and carrying a weapon.  She hadn’t taken to feeding on half-starved prisoners because she was comfortable in a fight.

In fact I wasn’t quite sure whether she was trying to rush at me or past me, but I didn’t stake my life on the odds that she would run away.  I struck her as hard as I could with my blade, and kept striking until she stopped moving or making noise.

A vampire.  Normally I wasn’t supposed to kill on the job, but I was sure even S’krivva would make an exception for defending myself against a vampire.

There was a dead body lying off in the corner of the room, and I was afraid it was probably Theranis.  I started to search his body on the off chance that he would still have the book on him, although I knew that was stupid.

“Thank the Nine,” a rough voice cried out behind me.  “I thought I’d never – wait.  Luminara?”

I turned around, noticing now the little cell at the opposite end of the room and the Argonian prisoner still inside it.  “Amusei!”  I felt like slapping myself in the head.  Or him.  “What did you get caught for this time?”

“Stealing a fish,” he said, his head bowed in shame.

“A fish.  You can’t even steal a _fish_ and not get caught.  Are you on a mission to see the inside of every prison cell in Tamriel?”

“I know, I know.  I should really join the Guild, shouldn’t I?”

“What you should really do is find another line of work.  Barring that, yes, at least in the Guild maybe somebody could train you.”

“Look,” he said urgently.  “I know I already owe you one.”

“Yes, I’m going to let you out,” I interrupted, already fishing for a pick.  “And then it will be two.”

“If you’ll make it three and see me all the way out of here, I’ll tell you what Theranis told me.  He had a message for the Guild.”

I worked on the lock to the cell.  “You’d better be telling the truth,” I snarled, “and it had better be good.  Or I’m not going to be this nice the next time.”

I led him back through the wine cellar and out of the castle.  Fortunately, he was capable of staying low and quiet if he was directed properly.  Once we were clear of the building, he told me that Theranis had hidden the book in a bush behind Nerastarel’s house.  Having heard Amusei’s promise to join the Guild and waved him off, I determined which house that was and recovered the book easily enough.  It seemed to be about a set of sacred documents called the Elder Scrolls, on which prophecies appeared and shifted:  when a thing happened its text became fixed forever, leaving a completely true and unchangeable account of history.

I took the book back to S’krivva, and with my pay she gave me an encouraging talk about my efficiency.  I wasn’t actually sure what to do with myself next:  the pay was less than half what I’d need to hire another pirate, so there was no point going back to Anvil yet.  I could go back to Chorrol and try there again, Othrelos’s disapproval be damned, but if I did that – if I did that, there was something else I should do first.

I went to Cheydinhal to find Guilbert, and again, I found him at the Newlands Lodge.  He laughed at my nonsense when I asked if he’d ever been on a drinking binge in Chorrol; but when I said the name _Reynald_ he went white, his eyes widening in shock.  “Take me there,” he said at once, leaping to his feet.

Luckily for him, I had no other business in town.  As we walked to Chorrol, he told me the story.  When he’d been a child, his family had lived on a farm outside Chorrol.  They’d been far enough out in the country to be vulnerable, and one day, while the father was off in town, they’d been attacked by something – he remembered it as being ogres, but admitted he’d been very young.  The father had returned to find his wife dead, Guilbert hiding and terrified, and his twin brother Reynald missing.  After a search, he had given Reynald up for dead, and he and Guilbert had moved to the other end of Tamriel to be away from the site of their grief.  A few years ago he had died and left Guilbert alone in Cheydinhal.

Guilbert was so anxious about the possibility that his brother was really alive that I didn’t ask him why his father had been willing to give up his other son for dead without having found the body, or how long he’d waited before doing so.  It didn’t seem like a moment when cynicism would be welcome.

Reynald, of course, was drunk again.  Or still.  He gaped as we approached him.  “I’ll be damned,” he drawled.  “He _is_ me.”

Guilbert introduced himself and explained their relationship, his voice quavering with emotion, and had to repeat the story a few times before Reynald understood.  When he finally did, they embraced and thanked me for giving them family.

What I’d actually given Guilbert was a drunk he’d be taking care of for the rest of his life, but I kept my mouth shut and smiled for them anyway.  While they started catching up, I got myself a room and went to sleep.

Guilbert came back to see me the next day.  “You’ve done us such a tremendous favor,” he said, looking a little awkward, “and I’d like to ask if you would do us another one.”

I shrugged noncommittally, and feeling encouraged, he continued.  “I’m wondering what became of Weatherleah, our old farm.  I don’t want to leave Reynald here, and I can’t take him until I know it’s safe, and – I would pay you.  That isn’t awkward, is it?”

“No, it isn’t awkward.  Where is the farm?”

He rubbed at the back of his neck.  “Well, I’m afraid I don’t remember exactly.  I was so young.  Perhaps someone in town would know.”

I smirked.  “You know I’m a stranger here, right?  Maybe you and Reynald should ask around, and get back to me.”

And meanwhile, I could finally rob that house like I’d been about to when Othrelos showed up to fight with me.  All their furniture was covered with dog hair, but a few of their other things were nice.  They were things Othrelos wouldn’t have left behind if he’d robbed them first.  What, had he broken in for the sole purpose of yelling at me?

I decided to spend a quiet evening in my room while I waited to hear back from the Jemane brothers.  I assumed it must be them when the knock came at my door.  But it wasn’t:  it was Fathis Ules and some Argonian thug.

Fathis was as short as a Bosmer, and he wore his hair swept up into two little points, a style I’d only ever seen on older meri who had lived in Morrowind.  He carried himself like an exiled prince, and he actually looked less stupid in furs than the Count of Leyawiin.

He grinned at me like I was a long-lost friend.  “Luminara!  I was about to travel back to the Imperial City, but I heard you were in town.  What brings you here?”

“Same thing that brings me anywhere else.  People with money and things I want.”  I forced myself to keep a casual posture.

“You should invite me in.”

I would rather not have, but it would probably lead to trouble if I didn’t, so I stepped aside and let them enter and close the door.

“I’ve never seen you since you joined the Guild,” he said in a pained voice.  “And we used to be so close.”

“You were close to my father, not me.”

“I would have hired you myself if I’d known you were ready.”

I took a deep breath.  “I would not have worked for you.”

His smile was not really very pleasant.  “I’m sure I would have found some way to persuade you.”

I had no intention of letting him cow me.  “Don’t be.  I am not my father.”

“But you are your father’s child.”  He stepped closer to me, lowered his voice.  “Do you have any idea how much he owed me?”

“Two thousand septims.  And it’s been paid.”  Othrelos _had_ paid it, hadn’t he?

“Not even close.  You alone were worth more than that.”  He took another step, now uncomfortably close.

He meant the time my father had used me as a bet.  “That was a separate debt.  I paid that one myself.”

“Oh, no.  You paid me three hundred septims.  Did you really think that was your value?”  He touched my cheek, and I jerked away.  “But Armand showed up, you see.”

Armand – that was right, he had.  I remembered how Othrelos had insisted on Armand as my doyen.

“He would have gone straight to the Gray Fox if I’d collected,” Fathis went on, “and our Guildmaster – well.  He has that silly Imperial notion that mer, men, and beasts are all _equal._ ”

To cover my growing alarm I put on a toothy grin.  “I’ll be sure to share your views with S’krivva.  She finds the old Dunmer attitude so amusing.”

“Yes, S’krivva,” he said with clear distaste, and withdrew a step.  Good, the effect I wanted.  “Still, I think you and I will come to an understanding in the end.  I am known for being persuasive.”  He glared at me.  “And stubborn.”  He waved over his shoulder at the Argonian, who opened the door for him.

I hurried across the room to close it again behind them.  _My_ value.  He still expected more payment from _me_ , apart from my father’s debt _._   Did Othrelos know?  It would explain why he’d been so paranoid about me crossing paths with Fathis, certainly.  But then why hadn’t he just warned me?

He hadn’t even bothered to tell me the amount.  Well, I had S’krivva to discourage him, of course.  He wasn’t going to cross S’krivva to get me, no matter how much he thought I was worth.  He’d never dare anything in the Imperial City, and I could just not come to Chorrol again – those were the two places he spent the most time himself.

Nonetheless, I was feeling more wary when the next knock came half an hour later, the one that really was Guilbert with proper directions to his farm.

I went there the next morning, and found it overrun – by ogres, funnily enough, these many years later.  I really wished I’d learned how to shoot better, or cast fireballs, or something else that maintained a comfortable distance.  I was getting better with a sword, but even so, I was more about finesse than raw power, and the latter was really the thing wanted against such a huge opponent.

And yet I felt somehow compelled to handle it myself so the twins wouldn’t have the trauma of fighting the kind of monsters that killed their mother, right where it had happened.  They seemed like the sort to see that as a trauma rather than an opportunity for retribution.  So I sneaked in, cut, ran away, sneaked in, cut, ran away, over and over again.  It took forever.

The Jemanes were thrilled to see their old house again, even though it was a complete wreck, and Guilbert immediately started making noises about restoring it.  And he did in fact pay me.

That put an end to my business in Chorrol, so I quickly put it behind me and ran up to Bruma, where I sold my other earnings to Ongar.  From there I made my way back down toward Anvil.  Instead of hitting more houses in the towns, I went back to my first skill, picking pockets.  On the road I took to rolling bandits in honor of Mazoga.

So by the time I got home – that was how I was coming to think of Dunbarrow Cove – I could pay for two more pirates to join the crew.  My first pick was an archer, a Bosmer woman named Melliwin, because I was tired of not being able to deal with an enemy at a distance.  The second was Kovan Kren, a Dunmer spymaster who brought a well-abused target dummy with him.  It turned out to be a sign of his love for swordplay.

The last two just followed me home like stray dogs:  Scurvy John Hoff and Yinz’r.  Word had gotten out that I was hiring, they said, and that Zedrick was going to be leading the expeditions.  I hadn’t realized it, but he actually did have a reputation among others of his profession.  Now that there really seemed to be a plan coming together, they were willing to sign up on the assumption that there’d be pay later.

So now he had enough of a crew to actually man his ship.  He was overjoyed.  He did have the sense not to show his enthusiasm by groping me publically – that would have been a bad example to the men, after all – and anyway, the new gleam in his eye clearly had more to do with getting back to his calling than with sex.

“Well?” I cried when we had everyone gathered, and I waved an arm around grandly.  “What do I pay you all for?  Get out to that ship and earn me back my investment!”

They responded with a bloodthirsty roar of approval, and fairly stampeded away.  Within minutes there was no trace of them, and I was alone.  All alone in an abandoned wreck within an enormous cave.

…Well.  What did I care about that?  More ale for me.  I drank myself sick.

 


	8. You Don't See Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What do you get when you cross an emotional garbage fire of a girl with a missing beau, and a legendary man with inscrutable secrets and an unrequitable love? Guilty, angsty sex. (sex chapter, obviously)

After a few days I couldn’t bear any more peace and solitude, so I headed back to Bravil to see if S’krivva had anything for me.

“This one has heard you are spending a lot of time in Anvil,” she purred.  “Did you know that it is under the personal protection of the Gray Fox?”

“No, I didn’t.”  Which meant that the more important I became to the Gray Fox, the less likely it would be for trouble from Fathis to follow me to Anvil.  Excellent.  “But I thought he protected the Waterfront.”

“And Anvil and its Countess.  And that is what makes this plan so ingenious.”  She paused for effect.  “The Countess of Anvil is looking for a new guard captain, and the Gray Fox would like to ensure that Hieronymus Lex gets the position.  That will get him out of the way of the Guild permanently while putting his…talents,” she said reluctantly, “to better use.”

“That is very clever,” I agreed, although I hoped he wouldn’t end up taking an interest in pirates if he was in Anvil.

“The commander of the Imperial Watch has sent a list of recommendations, and unfortunately, Hieronymus Lex is not spoken of highly.  In this our previous efforts work against us.  You must get the letter from the steward in Anvil and have a new version forged, recommending Lex.  You will also have to get a hold of the commander’s seal to complete the forgery, and then deliver the letter to the Countess.”  She didn’t have a suggestion for who to have write the new letter, but she promised to reimburse me for whatever I had to pay to whoever I found.

Back to Anvil, then.  S’krivva was developing a habit of sending me right back to where I’d just been.

The Countess of Anvil, Millona Umbranox, was a widow.  At least that was what everyone assumed she was and what she presented herself to be, since her husband had been missing for nearly ten years.  She never married again:  she just wrapped herself and the castle in lace and ruled alone.

Her steward’s name was Dairihill, and she was a light-haired Bosmer.  Her office was within her private quarters in the heart of Castle Anvil, but she spent less time there than with the Countess.  All of this I learned from the beggars, and also that the Castle had “secrets,” and that I might learn them from Orrin, the blacksmith.

There was something a little awkward, and yet also amusing, about crossing the bridge onto the island where the Castle stood and knowing that somewhere underneath it was my own home, the abandoned ship from which I managed my crew of pirates.

They hadn’t lied about the lace:  long panels of it hung across the back wall of the audience chamber, and more decorated the blue gown of the Countess.  She could not have been any older than my mother, and like Yvette she was lovely – although unlike my mother, she showed no interest in playing up that fact.  The kind of prettiness she displayed was untouchable, and she wore her elaborate dress like armor.

The mer who must be Dairihill stood not far from her, and at the other end of the chamber sat several people of no special interest, waiting for an audience.  I walked away from all of them and toward the hall leading to the smithy.  It was still within the public part of the castle.  I was within my rights.

Behind the counter was an elderly Redguard.  “Orrin?” I asked, and he turned to face me.  “I was told I should talk to you.  Olvus sent me.”  One of the beggars I’d talked to, more often called Penniless Olvus by the locals.

“Olvus, eh?”  Orrin raised his eyebrows at me.  “And what shadow sent you to Olvus?”

The veiled question, deniable to someone who didn’t understand it.  “S’krivva.”

He smiled.  “Well, you know what they say:  a friend of S’krivva’s is a frightening thing.”  He chuckled a little.  “Do you need a fence?”

A fence, right in the middle of Castle Anvil.  This was a wonderful city.  “No,” I said, leaning in so we could speak quietly.  “I need a letter out of Dairihill’s desk.  Guild business.”

“I can help with that, too.  Follow me.”  We walked into a wine cellar, and he approached a niche in the northern wall, then turned to look at me knowingly.

“This will take you past most of the guards,” he said, pulling at one of the decorative pillars.  A secret door opened.  “The office will be on the left.  Shadow hide you.”

I thanked him and went down the passage, which led up a set of stairs.  After a quick spell to confirm that no one was waiting on the other side, I opened the other hidden door the same way.  The room and the desk were both locked, but I was quick.

The letter called Lex “fanatical” and thus not especially good for the position.  His fixation on the Gray Fox and repeated failure to catch him were taking a toll on his career.

I went back out through the secret passage and the smithy.  Now I was going to need a forger, and I didn’t know one.  I went back to Olvus for another tip, and he told me that there was a fellow in an abandoned house near the Mages’ Guild.  No one seemed to know his name, and in fact he was so unassuming that it would be difficult to find him away from the house, but nonetheless he was the one to go to for a forgery.

I went in the morning, which was a mistake because he wasn’t there.  I burned a few hours walking up and down the beach and came back in the afternoon, and he was there.  I could see what Olvus had meant about being unassuming:  he was a perfectly forgettable man –

Until he looked me in the face with his piercing gray eyes.  He had the well-angled sort of face that probably looked even better now that he was in his early middle age than it had in his youth.  Only his obvious discontent spoiled it.

“Olvus sent me,” I said.

He waved a hand dismissively.  “Yes, yes, are you one of us or not, the song, the dance.  Let’s skip all of that.  You’re here for a forgery.  Show me what I’m copying.”

I was startled by his candor.  “How did you know – ”

“Well, what else would you be here for?  I don’t lead tours of the city, you know.  Come on, let’s have it.”

I pulled out the letter and gave it to him.  As he looked over it, I explained, “Only we want it to recommend Hieronymus Lex instead of that other fellow.”

“Right, right.  Otherwise you’d just keep the original.”  He looked back up at me.  “I’ll do it for five hundred.  It’ll take me a day.”

I paid him and left before it occurred to me that we hadn’t traded names.  Well, there was really no reason to, after all.  What further use was I going to have for him after tomorrow?

My crew had come home with a thousand septims for me, and we spent the night out drinking to celebrate.  I was happy for the company, but when I woke up tangled in Zedrick and Jak’s limbs, they were ready to set off again.  I didn’t keep them.

We’d slept away a good portion of the morning, so I didn’t have to entertain myself for that long before I could go back to the abandoned house and get my letter.  Knowing I’d just seen him the day before, I was surprised at how poorly I’d recalled his features.  He was rather attractive for an unhappy man.  He handed me both documents with an odd, humorless smile and told me to take care.

Now I was going to have to walk up to the Imperial City, do one thing, and then come right back all the way to Anvil.  Maybe sometime I was going to have to invest in a horse.  But at least the time I spent on the walk wondering what interest the Gray Fox had in Anvil was time I didn’t spend wondering why Othrelos had turned on me.

But why _had_ – no, I didn’t want to think about that any more.  It was because it didn’t pay to count on anyone, that was all.  I didn’t see why that should surprise me so much, given my upbringing.  I should already have known that I could trust people just as far as our common interests carried us.  I was better off with S’krivva and my pirates.

Getting into the Imperial Legion commander’s office was a chore, since it was right in the middle of their headquarters, near the prison.  I spent a full day and night watching the comings and goings of the Watch, trying to learn their rhythm.  Then, of course, I had to creep off and sleep before I could come back and wait for one of the few openings they would leave me. 

Then I ducked behind a table as some young fool defied the pattern and wandered in looking for something.  I crouched there with my heart in my throat for what felt like an hour until he left.  I was afraid I wouldn’t have enough time left to open the locked door, but luckily my hand was steady and I got through.

I rifled through the desk and found nothing useful.  I had to open a locked trunk – more time burned away – to find the seal, which I quickly used on the forged letter and replaced.  If it went missing, that would cast doubt on the letter when word got out.

When I came back through the first room, which seemed to be some sort of mess hall, a different man had come in, but he was not an attentive one, and I was able to move around behind him and escape.

More days of walking back down to Anvil.  I washed and put on something nice before going back to the castle, since I figured I was going to have to present the letter to the Countess myself.  It had finally dawned on me to wonder why her steward would have stashed the letter in her desk rather than actually giving it to her Lady.

The Countess Umbranox wore her hair back in a braided roll like I did, but hers was light brown streaked with gold.  Her voice, like her face, was cool but not unkind.  “This letter!  I had given up on it.  I was ready to appoint Dairihill’s cousin.”

Ah.  I glanced sidelong at the steward, who did not look at all pleased by this turn of events.  The Countess opened the letter and scanned its contents.  “Hieronymus Lex,” she mused.  “He sounds very well qualified.”  She closed it again.  “Please return to the Imperial City and inform him that he has the job.  Dairihill will pay you the customary fee for courier work – it is twenty septims, isn’t it, Dairihill?”

“Yes,” Dairihill snarled, pulling out the money.

Twenty septims for honest work:  no wonder I was a thief.  But my pay was Dairihill’s face, and the anticipation of Lex’s.

I walked back out past a man who sat as if waiting for an audience, although he didn’t rise when he saw me leaving.  He only watched me go, and I thought he had the ghost of a smile on his face.  Did he know me?  Had I ever seen – no, there was nothing familiar in his features.  He was a stranger.

When I reached the Imperial City, Lex was, as before, pitifully cheerful to see me back in town, and asked me what I had been doing with myself.

“Right now,” I told him, “I’m working as a courier for the Countess of Anvil.”

“Anvil!” he smiled.  “That’s a pretty town.  I used to go down sometimes before I was promoted to captain.”

“You’ll be seeing it again.  My message is for you.  You’ve been appointed head of the city guard in Anvil.”

“I’ve what?”  He looked perplexed.  “I didn’t even apply for – oh, of course.”  He winced in frustration.  “The Gray Fox.  It has to be.”

I made myself look innocent.  “It has to be what?”

“He’s done this somehow,” he hissed.  “To get me out of the Imperial City.  By the Nine, and there’s nothing I can – ”  He sighed, relaxed, and then spoke in a clearer but defeated voice.  “There’s nothing I can do.  He’s won.  I’ll go to Anvil.”

I actually felt a little bit sorry for him.  “It’s something of a promotion, isn’t it?  Shouldn’t you be happy?”

“Yes, a promotion.  He’s killing me with kindness.”  He shrugged.  “Well, Luminara, it is good to see you, and if you are living in Anvil I’ll be seeing you again.  I should go and pack.”  Then he went away dejected, the poor thing.

But I was off to Bravil to finally get paid for all this running back and forth.   By now I was sick of travel, so I got a room in town and stayed the night there.  I also bought and burned some lavender so the place wouldn’t smell quite so much like sewage.

In the morning there was a knock at the door.  I ran through the options in my head:  S’krivva had no use for me, or she would have told me the day before.  Fathis wouldn’t dare come after me right under her nose.  Othrelos – well, that was just too optimistic, and anyway, he had no way of knowing I was in Bravil.

It was Methredhel.

“The Gray Fox has a job for you,” she whispered after she was inside, a sort of awe in her face.  “He asked for you specifically.”

“You spoke to him?”

She answered with a cheerful nod.  “He will be waiting in Helvius Celia’s house in Bruma.  You should go right away.”

“Should I?  I thought maybe I’d keep the Gray Fox waiting for a few days.”  But my smile was genuine, and she seemed to understand that I was making a joke.  There was no reason for hard feelings between us.

Although I didn’t normally like the cold in Bruma, it was better than the smell of Bravil.  There was a man standing outside Celia’s house:  though he wore civilian dress and stood in a pose that was meant to look casual, I recognized by his carriage that he was there as a guard.  He looked me over, nodded, and let me pass.

The Gray Fox stood as I entered the room, and smiled.  “You’ve been doing capital work,” he said.  “Handled Lex splendidly.”

I wanted to ask him about that, but it seemed presumptuous.  “Thank you.”

“So now it’s time we got a bit more ambitious, don’t you think?  You seem ready, and all the research checked out, so we should begin.”

“Begin what?”

He didn’t quite answer that.  “First we are going to need Savilla’s Stone.  It’s a crystal that’s kept at the Temple of the Ancestor Moths.  I’m going to need it to give me… advantage.  You’ll bring it here when you have it.  Do you know where the Temple is?”  I shook my head.  “It is due east of here and due north of Cheydinhal.  The place will be well guarded down where the Stone is kept.  Do not kill any innocents – but.”  He made a nervous gesture with one hand, as if considering.  “But if you must fight the guardians of the Stone, there will be no blood price for that.”

I’d never heard of such an exemption before.  “The Stone must be very important.”

“It is rather.”  He made the gesture again.  “There was another thing.”  He paused.  “You – kissed me, before.”  Another pause, and he glanced away.  “Thank you.  It had been a long time.”

And abruptly the magnetism he’d tried to shut down last time was back, even stronger for the loneliness I was feeling myself.  I smiled a little.  “Careful, or I’ll do it again.”

“You shouldn’t.  I’d only want more.”  He looked back at me and gave a humorless little laugh.  “That’s been even longer.”

That was hard to imagine.  I stepped close to him.  “Why?” I asked.  His lips parted a little, and he was breathing harder as I moved into his space.  “Why has it been so long?”

His hand wandered up to my cheek, but there was a bit of hurt in his eyes.  “Don’t make me try to explain.”

I put my hand over his.  “All right.”  But I also pressed up against him and tilted up my head.  “Then why shouldn’t I kiss you?”

Apparently he had no answer to that, because after a second he pressed his lips against mine.  His first kiss was tentative, but when I responded by putting my arms around his neck it became more insistent, and his hands moved gently around my waist and onto the small of my back.

However, they left my back very quickly and grabbed me by the wrists when I made as if to push back the cowl.  “No.”

“Why not?” I purred in his ear.

He sighed.  “Because you are not going to want the man behind the cowl.  You want the Gray Fox.”

I shook my head, planted a light kiss on his jaw.  “ _You_ are the Gray Fox.  And I am not quite that shallow.”

He growled in frustration.  “It is not an accusation, it’s – very well.”  He grimaced a little.  “I’ll make you an offer, Luminara.  Earlier tonight, I told you my real name.  If you still remember it, I’ll take off the cowl.”

He did?  He must have.  It didn’t feel like a lie.  Damn!  Why hadn’t I paid closer attention?  Why couldn’t I remember it?

He was waiting for me to respond, looking patient and resigned, knowing already that I’d forgotten, and I felt horrible.

“No, no,” he murmured, running his fingers through my hair.  “Don’t be upset.  I’m not angry with you.  I was only making a point.  We must be honest with ourselves about what this is, and what it is not.  I am content with a – symbolic connection.”  He kissed slowly up my shoulder, his hands back at my waist, and I wrapped my arms around him again. 

“Who would you wish for?” he asked quietly, nuzzled close against the side of my neck.  “Who is it you really want?  Tell me a name.”

The symbolic connection.  I felt strange confessing desire for one man in the arms of another, but it was what he wanted, and in any case the name came so easily to my lips that it was out before I could really think it through.  “Othrelos.”

He nodded, content with my answer.  “Millona,” he whispered in my ear.

_That_ was the interest he had in Anvil.  He wanted – but his tongue traced my lips and cut off that train of thought.  The kisses were deeper now, harder, and he ran his hands up and down my back with increasing urgency, then around to start unbuttoning my shirt.  Mine went, unconsciously, to stroke his face – and he jerked away from me again.

“I wasn’t trying to take it off,” I protested.

He relaxed back into my embrace.  “I know.”

“This is going to be much more difficult if I can’t actually touch you.”

“I’m aware of that.”  He frowned for a moment, then asked me if I had a scarf.  I did, in my bag.  He draped it across my eyes and tied it snugly behind my head.

A relieved-sounding sigh as his arms dropped around me again.  “There.  An extra safeguard against your curiosity.”  This time his lips came to the base of my neck, where he kissed gently as he took off my shirt.  Usually I liked more roughness, but somehow not being able to see him made his gentleness exciting.  I felt for the edges of his shirt and fumbled with it, and he chuckled and took it off himself.

He made a thoughtful noise, then put an arm around my waist and slowly led me into a different room.  Here there was a bed, and he laid me down.  I raised my hips to help him finish undressing me, and shivered as his fingers traced gently down the length of my body.  After another moment he pushed me back down and joined me, and I could feel the heat of his skin against mine.  He ground against my thigh as he took my nipple into his mouth, and I dug my fingers into – into the fabric of the cowl, still on his head.  He was taking no chances, even now.  I growled a little.

“What?” he rasped, pinching my other nipple until I arched toward him.  “Did you think I was going to take it off once I blindfolded you?  What if you tried to cheat?”

He took me roughly with his fingers, as if that was supposed to be punishment for my impudence, and I moaned happily and moved in time with him.  “Are you – are you calling me a cheater?”  I laughed a little and he nipped at my breast, teasing.  We both knew there was no point to his answering that.  Nor to my asking my real question:  _who are you that it’s so important for me not to see your face?_

When I was close to frantic with need he removed his fingers and slid into me, and I gasped with relief and clawed into his shoulders.  He hissed, sharply enough that I was not sure it was with pleasure, so I tried to relax my grip a little.  As we fell into a rhythm together, he pressed down close against me and brought one hand up to the side of my face, two fingers cradling the back of my neck.  I arched my head up a bit and parted my lips, hoping to lure him in to kiss me, and it worked.  His kisses were passionate now, almost desperate.

I brought a hand up to his face.  Was his cheek damp?  Was he –

He withdrew and tugged hard at one of my shoulders, turning me over onto my stomach.  His hands swept down my back quickly, and he pressed against me again, his tongue tracing up my spine.  I sighed at the shiver that sent through me, and then he thrust into me again, deeper for the new angle.  I moaned and clutched at the sheets under me, frustrated that he had stolen most of my other options.  He kissed along the back of my neck and shoulders, delicate kisses that made my nerves scream.  I shook and howled at how much more I wanted.  I could hear him panting into my ear as he gripped into my sides and pounded into me, kept going faster and harder only to find that I would still take more.

Soon there was no more for him to give.  He came, and gave me one last slow kiss to the back of my neck, and collapsed.  Even I was short of breath, and I was content to lay there and relax as he rose first and dressed.  When he came back to the bed, he rolled me onto my back and politely took my hands to help me sit, then untied the blindfold.  The room seemed uncomfortably bright for a few moments.

He’d brought my clothes and laid them next to me.  While I dressed he stayed politely turned away, which I thought was merely quaint until I realized that he was still avoiding my gaze even after I was done.

I put a hand on his shoulder.  “Are you ashamed that you had sex with me?”

He put a hand idly over mine, but still didn’t turn to face me.  “It has nothing to do with you.  You’re very lovely.”  He sighed and glanced sideways at me.  “Go and get the Stone.  That’s what matters.”

Somehow that only made it worse.  I squeezed his shoulder.  “I want to understand.”

He patted my hand with a joyless laugh.  “I’m afraid that not everything depends on what you want, Luminara.”

Why did people keep saying that to me?

 


	9. The One That Saves Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sex gets even guiltier and angstier, there is bad news about Lum's mother, and Fathis delivers an ultimatum. (sex chapter)

The Temple of the Ancestor Moths – what a peculiar name – was far off in the middle of nowhere.  It was also high up in the mountains, which meant I was so cold when I got there that I feared for my ability to pick locks.  The monks welcomed me into their little side house as a visitor, and I took advantage of their hospitality to warm my hands.

There didn’t seem to be anything special about them, really.  As they told it, they were monks like any other monks, except that they supported their Temple by spinning and weaving silk.  They had this idea that the moths were connected somehow to the souls of their ancestors, and as such, they were housed in a nearby crypt.  I thanked them kindly and told them I was going to go in and visit the Temple, and they were happy for me to do so.

I wandered around inside the Temple for a while.  I’d thought the Stone might be in its undercroft, since that was where many temples and chapels seemed to keep their special things, but I had no luck there.  I did find a booklet describing something obscure about how the moths and their silk related to powers of destiny, and to the Elder Scrolls and their keepers.

Hmm.

I slipped out of the Temple and went to the adjoining crypt.  All the monks were still in their house, leaving me free to pick the lock and go inside.  Inside there was another locked door, and that one led down into a huge, dark maze.  Stores of food, mostly, it seemed, and –

And _someone._   I stopped very still, glad I hadn’t yet assumed it was safe to cast a light.  He seemed to move comfortably through the darkness – _blind priests_ , the booklet had said.  Blinded over years of reading the Elder Scrolls, and then housed down here. 

Actually a light would have been fine.  I just had to be quiet.

I moved slowly, passing five of them before I reached the door down to the next floor.  Beds and storage, here, and several more blind priests.  I was starting to worry that it was all a fool’s errand, but then I opened the door to the third floor down, and immediately had to pass a living skeleton.

Unlike the priests, it could see the light I’d started using, so I had to fight my way past it.  The way branched, and I tried going right.  Having doused my light in case of more skeletons, I almost walked into the first spike trap.

I thought I must be getting somewhere.  Half a dozen spike pits, and then another undead thing, and then tripwires.  Yes, there was certainly something up ahead less innocuous than housing for retired priests.

Behind one more locked door was a short hall into a large open chamber.  Up on a platform there were two columns holding shining stones, one dark and one lovely red.  Between them stood one more priest, this one holding a sword.

But he stared right past my light, blind like the rest of them.  Brilliant protection, there:  they must have been trusting in the traps a little too much.  With my most practiced and quiet steps, I started to move forward toward the platform.  The black stone suddenly flared to life, and I could actually hear the sucking in of magicka that came right before a blast of destructive energy.

Oh.

I ran toward the red stone, dodging the first shot.  The priest startled at the explosion behind me, and turned to face it.  As I rushed past him and grabbed the stone, he spun and took a swing in my direction.  I ducked and rolled, tumbling off the platform as the black stone gathered its force for another blast.  I’d never make it back to the door – but I saw a side passage and ran for it.  Again, the destruction spell exploding covered the sound of my feet, and I lost the priest.

I was far down the hall and around the corner when I stopped to catch my breath.  I glanced back:  he wasn’t following, and the stone had gone silent.  Dark Welkynd stone, it must have been.  I’d read about them, never expecting to see one.  I didn’t want to see another.

I was now in what seemed to be the guardian’s bedchamber.  A bedroll, a chest – a scroll.  What would a blind man need with a scroll?  Curious, I picked it up and read it.  At some point, this priesthood had developed an interest in Nocturnal’s Cowl.  The Gray Fox’s cowl.  They wanted to find it, find a way to use it for themselves… except that they had to proceed with caution and only after more research, because the cowl was cursed.

_Whosoever wears it shall be lost in the shadows. His true nature shall be unknown to all who meet him. His identity shall be struck from all records and histories. Memory will hide in the shadows, refusing to record the name of the owner to any who meet him. He shall be known by the cowl and only by the cowl._

He’d told me his name and challenged me to remember it, and I’d failed and blamed that on my own inattention.  He’d known I would fail, because he was cursed with eternal anonymity.

The scroll remained optimistic:  _All curses can be broken,_ it said, _even those laid by Nocturnal._   Oh, certainly.  Easy to thwart the will of a deity.  I lowered the scroll and stared off in thought.  The poor man.  The poor – in the direction I was looking there was a ladder leading upward.  A ladder!  If I’d looked for another way down, I could have saved myself all that work getting by traps.

The journey back to Bruma was uneventful, and the Gray Fox was still in the same house, waiting for my return.  At once he leapt to his feet on seeing me, eyes eager.  “Do you have it?”

I pulled Savilla’s Stone from my bag and held it forth for him, and he took it reverently, staring at it.  “Capital,” he whispered.  “This will help immensely.  Well done indeed.”

“What will it help with, if I may ask?”

“No, no, not yet.  It’s still too soon.”  He put the stone aside and pulled out my payment.  “But that was excellent work, Luminara.  You’re coming along splendidly.”

“I also found something else.”  I brought out the scroll and gave him that.  “I wanted to ask you about this.  You let me think it was my fault.”

“What was your fault?”  He scanned the page, then sighed bitterly.  “Ah.”

“Is it true?”

He stared at my feet for a few seconds before he responded.  “Yes.  The cowl is real, and the curse is real.  I am the Gray Fox.”  He paused to grimace.  “I am no one _but_ the Gray Fox.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” I said.

That only frustrated him, and he snarled at me.  “Of course it doesn’t make sense!  I’d have found the way out ages ago if it made _sense._   Nonetheless it’s true.”  He glared.  “Today alone I’ve told you my name three times.  Do you know it yet?”  He paused to give me time to realize I didn’t even remember hearing it, and stare back at him bewildered.

“No,” he said.  “It didn’t register.  I could say it fifty more times, and it wouldn’t matter.  If I took the cowl off and had you study me for an hour, you could walk away, come back, and not know who I was.”  He laughed a little.  “Do you see how perfect that is?  At this point, if I still wanted to be a criminal I’d be better off not wearing it.  I put it on when I want to be recognized and take it off when I don’t.  I live my whole life backward.”

I placed my hands on his cheeks.  “That’s so awful.”

“Stop it.”  He grabbed my wrists and pulled my hands away.  “I don’t want your _pity._ ”

I was sick of being pushed away by the men I reached out to.  “Don’t you?  Would you rather I was angry about that little trick you played on me last time, so you wouldn’t have to tell me the truth?  I felt awful!”

“Do you think I could have explained it?  Do you think you would have believed me?”

“Fine!  Then what do you want?”

He still had me by the wrists, and now his gray eyes were locked with mine, and he was panting with annoyance.  We stood that way for a moment, and it seemed that he could not find the words.

Instead, he yanked me toward him and pressed his lips over mine, forcing them open with a thrust of his tongue.  I melted immediately, meeting his tongue with mine and resting my body against his more deliberately.  At first he kept pulling me into him by my wrists, as if afraid I would try to escape.  Eventually his hands moved up my arms and around to my back, allowing me to wrap my arms around his waist.

The kiss broke into a series of shorter, fiercer ones as he began to open my shirt from the bottom up.  That was as far as he got with undressing me:  then he traced down my throat and across my chest with his mouth, grazing his teeth over my skin.  I hummed with pleasure as the rakes progressed into bites and moved up again toward my neck. 

He kissed me once more and looked me in the face, his lips parted with obvious desire but his eyes still full of frustration.  As I tried to reach for his shirt, he spun me forcefully away from him and leaned me forward against the desk where he’d set the Stone.

I growled, thwarted again.  “I wasn’t going to – ”

“Shush.”  He pinched both nipples at once, and I gasped and arched back toward him.  With a hum of satisfaction he pinched again, and as I moaned he started to suck at the back of my neck.  I rubbed my ass against him, the only gesture I really had available at this angle.  He let go of my breasts to free himself from his trousers and then hitch my skirt up around my hips.

“What do I want?” he whispered.  “I want to go home.”

He leaned on me heavily as he pressed into me, and my elbows ground uncomfortably into the wood of the desk.  His arms came back around me and he kneaded at my breasts.  He was being more forceful this time, less gentle, and I bit my lip happily and used my leverage on the desk to push back hard against his thrusts.

His fingertips dug into my skin.  “I want the woman I love to look into my eyes and say my name!”

We were slamming into each other hard enough to make the desk shake.  His morose speech ended with a moan and a bite to my shoulder, and for a while after that there was no sound except for our heavy breathing and the rhythmic clash of the desk and the wall.  I clenched my thighs together to make the way as tight as I could, to provide the resistance he seemed to need to drain his tension.  That was fabulous for me, too, a wave of intensified sensation that made me throw back my head and grin.  He reared up, holding me now by the shoulders as he picked up speed.  I could hear him panting as hard as I was, and his loud gasp as he came and fell down against me again.

His hands clenched into my shoulders for a second, and then he stepped away from me.  “Celia needs his house back,” he announced, sounding slightly uneven.  “We should go.  _You_ should go.”  He tugged my skirt back down over me and then retreated to the other side of the room as I straightened my back and rebuttoned my shirt.

“This again,” I frowned.  “You’re ashamed.”

“Not of you.  Of myself.” 

“For being with me.”

He raised a hand to his forehead.  “Gods, Luminara, this is not at all helpful to either of us.  I will call for you when I’ve finished my work with the Stone, when I know how we should proceed.”

I realized what the problem was.  “You feel like you’re being unfaithful to her.  Even though she doesn’t – ”

Even though she doesn’t know who you are, and never will.  And never can.

“Yes, yes!” he cried.  “Will you just _go?_ ”

He was miserable, and everything I did seemed to make it worse.  I left. 

I went down to Skingrad, suspecting that there was no point to it but somehow compelled to make the attempt anyway.  As with the month before, Othrelos didn’t come.  If he didn’t come for two months straight, I supposed that meant he wasn’t likely to come back again at all.  I spent a couple of days drinking to celebrate how free and open my life was:  when I reached the point of actually wondering whether I should go down to Leyawiin and visit my mother for support I decided I’d had enough. 

All the same, I went there to see Mazoga.  I couldn’t think of much else to do with myself.  The city was still buzzing with wild rumors:  a few weeks before, Lex’s predecessor as Watch captain, Adamus Phillida, had been found murdered in Leyawiin, and the Arch-Mage had been questioned and cleared.  Apparently some people still thought she’d killed him, but the local Mages’ Guild was sticking up for her.

I didn’t really want to think about the local Mages’ Guild, though, so I went to the lodge instead, to see if Mazoga was of a mind to take me bandit hunting.  But that didn’t seem to be what she wanted to talk about once she saw me.  “Luminara!”  She grabbed me quickly around the shoulders in a rough sort of hug, and then just as quickly let me go.  “You heard, then?”

“About what?  Phillida?  I didn’t know him.”

“No.”  Her eyes widened.  “Then you haven’t.  I didn’t think I’d be the one telling you.  This is really awkward.”  She rubbed at the back of her own neck in consternation.  “Your mother’s dead.  She was sick or something.”  She fell silent and stared at me, looking for my reaction.

She probably expected some kind of emotional response.  I knew that it would have been customary to have one.  But the woman had spent most of my life systematically destroying any spark of warm feeling between us, and I didn’t find any springing miraculously to life just because she was dead.

“All right,” I said coolly.  “How long ago was this?”

“Couple of weeks.  They wanted you at the Guild and didn’t know how to get a hold of you.”

I sighed.  “Fine.  I’ll go.  Want to come?  Yvette won’t be there.”  I snickered, then stopped when Mazoga reacted with a look of horror.

Agata understood my frame of mind a bit better, greeting me with an embrace but no other attempt at comfort, or at eliciting sorrow from me.  “Some exotic disease she picked up in her travels,” she told me.  “Alves figures it was something sexually transmitted.”

I snorted.  “Naturally.”

Agata gave me a wan smile back.  “Naturally.  I just hope she didn’t manage to spread it all over Tamriel.  I don’t know if it was something that would have been curable.  I don’t know if she even _knew._   I don’t suppose she said anything to you the last time you were here?”

“No.”  If she had known, she wouldn’t have told me.  What would the point have been?  I was just her good-for-nothing daughter.

We parted on “you’ll always be welcome here” noises, and I went off to hunt bandits with Mazoga, who didn’t make me insist very hard.  We made a bit of money on black bows, although I had Mazoga collect for all of them so as to avoid running into the Countess and her sadistic handmaiden.  I wasn’t in the mood to take another beating to cover the tracks of a job I’d already finished.  It didn’t sound like as much fun in this context.

This time it was Amusei who finally came to get me, which I found bewildering.  The Gray Fox wanted to meet with me, this time in Chorrol.  After assuring myself several times that Fathis was probably in the Imperial City and that I would be with the Guildmaster and thus untouchable in any case, I made the journey north.

“Good to see you,” he said quietly.  “I’m… sorry we parted awkwardly before.  I hope it’s not going to be a problem?”

I could be professional.  “No, it isn’t.”  I crossed my arms.  “Why in the world would you send Amusei?”

He chuckled.  “Methredhel is a bit sharper than I’d thought, so she’s learning how to work as a doyen.  Amusei, on the other hand, seems much better used as a courier than a thief.”

“Well, yes.  I’d have to agree with that.”

“I’ve been working with the Stone, and it turns out that we’re going to need something special for my plan to work.  It’s called the Arrow of Extrication.  You’re going to find it in Bravil, in the possession of Fathis – ” he paused to regard my startle response, and then finished with “ – Aren.  The court wizard of Bravil.  Fathis Aren.”  He looked at me soberly.  “You’re still having trouble with Fathis Ules?”

“No.”  I shifted my weight from one foot to the other.  “Why do you keep someone like him in the Guild?”

“It’s the _Thieves’_ Guild.  If I got rid of everyone unsavory, who would be left?”  He frowned.  “All the same, if there’s something you need me to handle…?”

“No, there isn’t.”  Not at the moment, anyway.  But it was good to have the confirmation that he’d stand behind me if it turned out that I needed that.

“Good.  I don’t want any distractions.”  He cleared his throat.  “Kill Aren if you have to,” he said quietly, “but – but try not to do it in the castle itself.  Out of respect to S’krivva.”

The usual tour of local beggars in Bravil gave me plenty of information to work with.  Fathis Aren was a conjurer with both a room in the castle and a tower outside the city walls.  The latter was impassably locked, but rumor had it that there was an underground passage linking it to the former.  So, to the castle it was.

The biggest problem was getting past the guards flanking the door to the north wing of the castle.  I was finally saved by a scullery maid who came by to flirt with them.  I found Aren’s quarters and searched them, finding several nice sellable items but no arrow.  I scoured the room for the odd architectural flourishes that tended to flag secret doors, and found what I needed without much effort.

What I found was not so much a “passage” as a tangled mess of tunnels that doubled back on themselves, and a gate that refused to open.  In one of the tunnels there was a deep chasm filled with water, and I supposed that was my last hope to find a way through.  It took several dives before I spotted the tunnel, and by the time I emerged into new territory my lungs were burning, and I had to rest for a few minutes before I went on.

Then there were the daedra, and the other conjurers – because apparently Fathis Aren had friends or apprentices who made use of the area as well.  Daedra were not so easy to sneak past as people, and I had to draw my sword against most of them.

Aren himself, on the other hand, was charmingly oblivious, and I slipped past him with no trouble.  Among his things I found a key to let me out of the tower the easy way, but still no arrow.  Only an arrow _head_ , an odd-looking one shaped a little bit like a key.  I couldn’t imagine it flying true, but there was a slight charge on it that I supposed was meant to correct for its peculiar shape.

So with that, I made my way back to Chorrol and the house where the Gray Fox was, again, waiting.

“I didn’t kill anything but daedra,” I told him, “but I’m not sure you’re going to be happy with what I’ve got.”  I pulled out the arrowhead and laid it in his outstretched hand.  “That’s all that was left of the arrow.”

“Oh dear.”  He held it up and studied it.  “That’s not going to do.”  He turned it over in his hand a couple of times, then sighed.  “I’ll have to see if a fletcher can reproduce the arrow correctly.  At least we have the point.”

“What is it for, exactly?”

“Just what it looks like.  It’s a key.”

“A key that has to be on the end of an arrow?”

He pocketed the arrowhead.  “I’ll explain it all when we get to that part.  Right now I have to worry about fixing it.  That and paying you, of course.”  He pulled out my money.

I took it from his hand quickly, and even so, I felt him draw back, avoiding extended contact.  “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,” I muttered.  “I’m not going to throw myself at you.”

He snorted.  “Thank you.  I was more concerned about myself.”  Then he turned slightly away, and added after a moment’s hesitation, “That… that mustn’t happen again.  It isn’t right.”

“Because of the Countess.”

He exhaled slowly.  “Yes.”

“Why her?”

I thought at first he would refuse to answer, but after a moment I realized he was looking wistful rather than defensive.  “I saw her walking out on the shore once,” he said quietly.  “Many years ago.  Laughing.  Back before all her troubles with the Count, she used to laugh at everything.  The sun was in her hair.”  He sighed.  “I loved her instantly.”

“But she married the Count?”

He frowned.  “But she married the Count.  Even though he was just slightly more reputable than the Count of Bravil.  And then he vanished, and now she doesn’t laugh.”  He looked at me, bitter.  “And what can I do now?”

“So you’ve never – ” I stopped short.  A stupid question to which I already knew the answer.

He pursued the thought anyway.  “I’ve never what?  Courted her as a man with no name and a face she will never remember?  Accosted her as a notorious criminal?”  He waved away the look I gave him.  “Never mind that.  I told you, I don’t want your pity.  At any rate, it all comes down to whether I can fix this arrow.”

My confusion over what the two subjects had to do with each other, he also ignored.  “And now,” he went on with a smirk, “I believe you owe me a story in exchange.  Why Othrelos?”

I looked down at my feet.  I didn’t want to talk about Othrelos.  Then again, I supposed he hadn’t wanted to talk about Millona.

“I’ve known him forever,” I said.  “Ever since I moved to the Imperial City.  He taught me, he looked out for me.  He was the reason I joined the Guild – I remember telling you.”  He nodded.  I smiled a little in spite of myself.  “He was so warm.  He was better to me than anyone has ever been.”

“And this is all in past tense because?”

“Because I haven’t seen him in two months.”  There, we’d come back to the reason I hadn’t wanted to talk about him.  Now I felt sour.  “Because the last time I did see him he yelled at me, practically ordered me away from him, and he hasn’t come to the meetings we arranged since then.”

He nodded.  “So you’re willing to give up for the sake of your pride.”

“What?” I scowled.  “I didn’t give anything up.  He sent me away.”

“Are you sure you know why?”  I stared at him for a moment without answering, and he sighed.  “You don’t know, then.  You’re guessing.  You’re assuming the worst from him because it’s what you think you get from everyone.  Sometimes there’s more going on than what you see, Luminara.”  He looked distant, almost sad.  “If he never tried to hurt you before, maybe he still hasn’t tried to hurt you.”

And that was when I finally put the pieces together.  Othrelos had told me he’d paid my father’s debt; Fathis had told me that debt was much more than I’d realized; Othrelos had developed this paranoia about Fathis.

Othrelos was in debt to Fathis, to protect me.  Away from home doing who knew what, trying to pay back the gods only knew how much, all for me, and I’d not only blithely accepted that kind of sacrifice, but took offense when he didn’t act happy enough about it.

“Oh, gods,” I whispered.  “I’m my mother.”

“You make that sound like a bad thing.”

I folded my hands behind my neck.  “You have no idea what a bad thing that is.”

He snickered at me.  “Then it’s probably not beyond fixing yet, or you wouldn’t be so upset by it.”

“I hope so.”  How in the world would I fix it?  At this point, how could I even let Othrelos know that I was willing to try?

The Gray Fox stepped closer to me, his arms folded against any temptation to proceed further than that.  “If you want him,” he murmured, “do everything in your power to keep him.  Don’t waste your chances.”  He glanced toward the door.  “Go.  I’ll send Amusei for you when I’ve settled the problem of the arrow.”

I fled to the Oak and Crosier – I could afford the inn with real beds now.  I barely had time to start pondering the questions my conversation with the Gray Fox had raised in my head when a knock came at the door.

I should have left town immediately after delivering the arrowhead.  It was Fathis Ules and his Argonian.  Again, I covered my distress with bravado.  “Are we going to be running into each other often?” I asked the Argonian as they entered.  “Should I learn your name?”

“Hides-His-Heart,” he rasped.

“You’ve concluded your business with the Gray Fox for the moment, I assume,” Fathis said casually.  “I was hoping that would leave you some time to discuss our business.”

“We don’t have any,” I said.  “There have got to be lots of other less troublesome people you could abduct into slavery.  There’s no reason to obsess over the one who got away.”

He laughed, pulling his hands behind his back.  “Of course not!  At this point you’re much too highly skilled to squander you as someone’s pet, even mine.  No, my thought was that I might persuade you to take some jobs for me when you’re not busy with S’krivva or our Guildmaster.”

I tried not to clench my fists, to keep my stance casual.  “I don’t see why I would.  In fact, I don’t see why I shouldn’t go straight to them and tell them all about your highly irregular request.”

The smile on his lips was far milder than the one in his eyes.  “Because I know where Othrelos is.”

I froze, and he paused to revel in my reaction.  “Yes,” he cooed, “I thought that would capture your attention.  I know he’s been missing your appointments in Skingrad.”

So wrong.  I’d been so stupid and wrong.

“Where is he?” I whispered.  “Is he all right?”

“I did not get where I am today by giving away valuable information for free.”

I took a step toward him, which caused Hides-His-Heart to take a step toward me.  I stopped.  “What do you want?” I hissed.

“For now?”  He raised his brows and looked off to one side thoughtfully.  “I believe you’re acquainted with the brothers Jemane.  Their father worked for me.  Shortly before the, ah, untimely demise of his wife, he was sent to acquire something for me and failed to deliver it.  I now believe that he tried to keep it for himself.  He may have hidden it in a cave south of here, or it may be buried somewhere near Weatherleah.  I want you to get it back for me.”

I was starting to feel sick.  “And what is it, exactly?”

“The Honorblade of Chorrol.  Lest you feel tempted to take it to the castle, keep in mind that I will pay you much better for it.  Something more valuable than money.”  He said the last with a toothy grin I didn’t like at all.

I gave a very small, tight nod, and he responded with a larger one.  “Very good.  I shall have my eye out for your return to Chorrol, then, and I will expect the blade.  Good evening to you!”

With that, he and his henchman left me, and I stood in the middle of the room for a long time trying to get my breath to come in something other than panicked sobs.


	10. You Know That We Will Meet Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The correct response to a threat is pirates.

The Honorblade was a lovely thing made of ebony, as black as my mood.

I’d decided to try the caves first, rather than Weatherleah.  The Jemane brothers were nice boys, and so taken with the idea of being a _family_ again that I didn’t want to tell them they’d come from a “family” like mine.  I’d hoped I would never have to, that the blade would be in the caves, and luck was with me in that.

There’d been ogres in the cave as well, but all in all the job was nothing extraordinary.  Nothing illegal, even.  Just a test to see if a threat dangled over O’s head would really be enough to keep me in line.

It would.  I brought the Honorblade back to Chorrol, got a room, and waited until Fathis returned to claim it.  I handed it over silently, and as he turned it over and examined it with obvious satisfaction, I said one word.

“Othrelos.”

“He’s fine.  He is away doing some errands for me.”

“Prove it.”

He shrugged and produced a short note.  I recognized the writing.

_Frathen Drothan’s excavation site located.  Awaiting further instructions. – Othrelos._

Another stupid question whose answer I knew tumbled out of my mouth.  “Why?”

He smiled like a doting grandfather.  “To pay for _you,_ of course.”

Of course.  And now he had me working to pay for Othrelos.  And as long as he kept us from finding each other, we were perfectly trapped.  I should have paid attention all those times Othrelos tried to warn me.  Of course, that would still have left him missing.

“Where is he?”

“I think I’ve told you enough for the price of one little favor,” he said, producing a bag of coins.  “But of course I pay for good work.”

Two thousand septims, the amount of what I’d originally thought was my father’s debt.  I wanted to throw the bag at the old mer’s head.  Instead I clutched it so tightly in my hands that my knuckles started to ache.

“I’ll send a message for you the next time I need your services.  I’m sure we can talk more about Othrelos then.”

And then he was gone.  I threw the bag at the door, which was much less satisfying.  I couldn’t let him take me by surprise next time, couldn’t let it go on like this.  I couldn’t let him keep O hidden from me and use him as a weapon.  I had to go somewhere and think.

I resisted the temptation to go to Bravil and talk to S’krivva.  Involving her would mean losing my chance at getting any information out of Fathis.  Still, I thought about her as I went west instead of south – about strength, about hunters and prey.  Rather than Bravil, I went down to my own lair in Anvil, where my pirates and their next payment were waiting for me.

Zedrick and Jak were disappointed when I didn’t invite them into my cabin during the group’s usual round of reunion ale.  They were also surprised when I asked them to stay on land for the time being anyway – until I told them why.

Waiting to hear back from one of my employers was the hardest part.  I tried to make it painfully obvious that I was in Anvil, frequenting both the docks and the shops and tavern within the city walls, rather than just staying sequestered in Dunbarrow Cove.  I helped the city guard break up a ring of girl bandits, so help me.  If Othrelos had never roped me into the Thieves’ Guild, I probably would have joined them.

Well, no, because they lacked subtlety.  They were bound to get caught sooner or later.  They were the kind of criminals who were good to have around, just because catching them made city guardsmen feel like they had done something, so they didn’t bother looking harder for those of us with talent.

Fathis was the one who sent for me first, asking me to the Motierre house in Chorrol.  I set out just as some kind of furor was rising up in Anvil about someone defacing the Chapel, and I was glad to be away, even as nervous as I was about my errand.

I didn’t think he’d mind my coming in wearing my sword.  He couldn’t think I trusted him enough to come unarmed.  After a look around the periphery of the house, I decided to look casual and come in the front way.

He was sitting in front of the fireplace, facing the door.  “Ah, good.  I have something a bit more involved for you this time.”

“Do you?  I take it Othrelos is well?”

“He is.  We can discuss it further after your contract.”

I licked my lips.  “You came by yourself?”

He chuckled.  “Of course not, my dear.  I have several… assistants throughout the house.  I never travel without protection.”

“That’s what I thought.”  I composed myself, kept my face blank.  “Now, I’d like to talk about Othrelos before we actually discuss this assignment you have for me.  You didn’t give me very much last time, and I want to be sure I’m not doing all of this for nothing.”

“I assure you that the boy has come to no harm by me.”

My back stiffened.  “That’s a rather restricted answer, isn’t it?”

“It’s all you’re going to – ” He stopped when he heard the crash upstairs.  “Hides-His-Heart?  Lazarr?” he called loudly, without turning away from me.  There was no answer, and I allowed myself a little smile.

When Zedrick appeared on the stairs and Melliwin emerged from the back of the house, Fathis leapt to his feet, and it was with great joy that I kicked him back down into the chair.

“Your vessel’s been boarded by pirates,” I sneered, drawing my sword.  “Now tell me _exactly_ where Othrelos is.”

He remained calm, even as I raised the tip of my sword toward his throat.  “He’s going to be very unhappy if you kill me, you know.  I’m his uncle.”  I wavered, and he nodded comfortably.  “I suppose you never wondered why he doesn’t use his last name?”

I hadn’t, actually, even though it was extremely unusual for a Dunmer not to have a family name and to share it proudly.  Family pride was too alien a concept for me to have noticed it was missing in him.

“He actually came here from Morrowind running away from the family business; I think he was a bit distressed to find I’d established it here.”  He snorted.  “He refused to get involved with me until I gave him a good enough motivation.  So I thank you for that.”

Growling, I knelt in his lap and turned my blade to press the edge against his throat.  “He’d forgive me.  He forgives me everything.  _Where is he?_ ”

Now he frowned.  “He will be in more danger if you find him than if you don’t.”  He hissed as I pressed the sword closer, and relented.  “The eastern edge of Cyrodiil.  He has infiltrated an army that is preparing to invade Tamriel.  You mustn’t compromise his work.”

“ _You_ sent him to infiltrate an army.  To counter a threat to the Empire.”  How stupid did he think I was?  “Why you?  Why Othrelos?  Why isn’t it the Imperial Legion, or the Blades?”

“Because they do not understand the threat like I do.”  Anger was starting to show in his voice.  “I doubt the Imperial agents in Morrowind have even informed anyone in Tamriel.  What’s coming is not a sanctioned attack.  It would be an embarrassment to our King and a threat to both countries.”  He sneered at my bewilderment.  “Don’t look so surprised.  It isn’t altruism, you know.  I’m a successful Dunmer in Tamriel:  open strife between the Empire and Morrowind would be horrible for my business.”

“So you sent your own nephew to deal with it.  Did you send him any help?”

He hesitated.  “He’s a trained assassin.  I made sure I gave him a couple of those contracts before I sent him, to make sure those skills were still sharp.”

I could feel myself panting, and struggled to maintain control.  “You’ve been making him kill people.”

“Not _exclusively._   It’s not as if he was Morag Tong.  But his father wanted him to be a capable enforcer.  It’s not my fault the boy lacks ambition.”

It was true that I probably shouldn’t kill him.  I had to breathe.  “Tell me exactly where he is.  Tell me before I decide that O’s family belongs in the ground with the Jemanes’ and mine.”

He sighed.  “Sundercliff Watch.  On the eastern shore of Lake Canulus.”

I climbed out of his lap.  “We’re square,” I told him.  “I owe you nothing, and Othrelos owes you nothing.  I’m not just threatening you with Guild politics now.  I have muscle of my own, like you do.  Stay away from us.”

“Stay away from my own flesh and blood?”

“Yes.”  Now that I had the information I needed, I was calm enough to be practical.  “I’m not after your pride or your business, Fathis.  No one is going to know we had this discussion.  I’m just letting you know how it will be if you press this issue.”

He nodded.  “As you say, then.  Give him my regards, and try not to get him killed.”

I let my assistants ransack the house before we left it for good, but the take was not impressive, and the pirates agreed unanimously that they preferred foreign supply ships.  All the same, they also agreed to come with me to find Othrelos:  I was their friend, their financier, and on land, their captain.  And as Zedrick said, the scale of the task before me clearly “called for a crew.”

But it had been bad enough trekking them all from Anvil to Chorrol on foot:  to now hike all of us across the broadest part of the country from west to east would be ridiculous.  We bought enough horses to camouflage the fact that we were stealing the rest of them, and having mounts sped up the journey considerably.

Still, there was time for long conversations about stealth, and strategy.  Most of us were going to stick out in a hole full of Dunmer:  we agreed that other than myself, Kovan Kren would be the other one in the lead, followed by Yinz’r, who could pass as the kind of servants they’d be likely to employ.  We’d scout ahead of the others for trouble.

If there was an army waiting underground, they’d covered their tracks well.  To all outward appearances, Sundercliff Watch was just one more ruined fort, the likes of which were littered all over Tamriel – often, to be sure, filled with bandits, whereas this one seemed completely abandoned.  Perhaps that in itself was suspicious.

Sure enough, we found two guards posted in the keep.  Melliwin shot one through the throat while Kovan and I dispatched the other.  Opposite us in the room was a hall ending in a thick-looking door.  We nodded to each other quietly, and Kovan moved ahead of me to knock.

A muffled voice came from the other side.  “Who gathers stormclouds over Nirn?”

Kovan snorted.  “Chimer!” he called back, and within seconds we could hear the door being unlocked.  “As any child would know,” he whispered over his shoulder to me.

“Really?  I didn’t.”

But then the door was open and there were two more Dunmeri to kill, which again we accomplished quickly.  By the door was a table, and the documents there yielded a great deal of information.  They referred to the gathered soldiers as Drothmeri, under the leadership of Arch-Mage Frathen Drothan – yes, the name from the note Fathis had shown me.  If Fathis was correct, Morrowind’s Arch-Mage was acting without the sanction of his King.  The papers seemed to support that theory:  Drothan was calling for better vigilance at the door, as he had already caught a would-be assassin –

Oh, gods.

I was never going to find him in time if my heart stopped beating.  I argued with it silently for several seconds before I felt it thud painfully back to life.

“Quickly now,” I hissed.  “Quickly.  Now we are looking for a prisoner.”

Through another door, this one unlocked, and into a huge open cavern with several wooden shacks built where the ground was flat enough, and a bridge crossing from the western to the eastern side.  Kovan and I silently waved to each other that we would each scout a different area.  I crept northward and into the first building I found.

It was clearly a little prison, and my heart jumped at my good luck.  The cell was unguarded, and occupied.  Fighting to control my breath and my grin of relief, I picked the lock.

The prisoner who turned and came to the door was significantly older than Othrelos.  “Thank you, Breton,” he whispered.  “Your business here is your own:  I return to mine.”  A chameleon spell glimmered over him, and then he was gone.

Confused and now concerned again, I searched the nearby desk for information.  Morag Tong, this prisoner had been, an assassin officially sanctioned by the government of Morrowind.  But he’d hidden his writ of execution so as not to let his enemies learn who his target was.  That he’d been jailed at all was more proof that Drothan was exceeding his authority.

Then where –

Shouts and sounds of struggle outside.  My people had been spotted.

I ran out into the chaos.  Several Dunmeri soldiers had come out into the center of the cavern, clashing with Kovan and Zedrick; two were running for an eastern passage with Jak and Yinz’r in pursuit; an archer shot at their backs from a balcony on the next building ahead of me.  Melliwin spotted him and fired back, but he had Yinz’r down before she even notched her first arrow.

And, of course, one other soldier saw me emerge from the little jail and rushed me, as yet two more of his fellows joined in the main fight, going after Melliwin.  I drew my sword and struggled against my opponent, making several attempts before I finally sliced deep enough into his kidney to stop his advance.  I turned to see how my friends were doing.

It looked like Jak had prevented the fleeing soldiers from getting out to raise any alarms.  Scurvy John had beaten back Melliwin’s attackers at first, but took an arrow to the leg and then fell to their swords.  Zedrick ran to defend her, and she focused again on the archer, finally piercing his right shoulder and forcing him to lower his bow.

He dropped to his knees, and as Melliwin’s next shot flew towards his heart, I saw his face.

“Hold!”  I screamed, running toward the building.  “Hold!”

It was a barracks, empty now because its tenants had all come out to meet us already.  I ran up the stairs and onto the balcony, turning the now-limp body so that I could look at him more closely.

Yes.  This one, bleeding and losing consciousness, feverish from the poison on Melliwin’s arrows.  This one was Othrelos.

 


	11. The Love You've Been Hiding From Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A heartwarming reunion and an evil dagger. (sex chapter)

I was struggling with all my puny might to drag him inside to safety when Zedrick arrived and carried him to a bed for me.

“This is him, then?” he asked, looking down at the unconscious Dunmer.

“Yes!” I cried, flailing uselessly.  “Potions!”

Zedrick cleared his throat.  “Better to take the arrows out while he can’t feel it.”

I could barely see for – oh, for the tears, that was why.  “Do it then!  Hurry up, while I find the potions.”  I knelt and started to fumble through my bag as Zedrick positioned himself over Othrelos and, with a grunt of effort, heaved out one arrow and then the other.

I slammed down two bottles of healing potion on the floor next to me.  “And one for poison.  Where’s the one for poison?”  Zedrick reached down and took it out of the bag for me, and I sobbed once, then pulled myself back together with a growl.  I watched and felt helpless while the pirate gathered pillows from the other beds and used them to prop Othrelos up a bit, so it would be easier to pour the healing potions down his throat.

“So it’s all clear now?” I hissed, and he nodded.  “Good.  Set up a watch.  Leave me alone up here until I call for you.”

He hesitated.  “We didn’t know,” he said at last.  “He fired on us.”

“I know that.  Go downstairs.” 

When he was gone, I sat down next to Othrelos, as best I could on the edge of the narrow bed, and poured the antidote into his mouth first, slowly, stroking his throat with my free hand to try to force him to swallow though unconscious.  I followed with the first of the healing potions, and then thought he might need more than I’d gotten out, and fumbled through my bag again for yet another, and set it next to the other one I hadn’t yet used. 

The effect was not immediately obvious.  I started to fidget and whimper frantically to myself about what I was going to do if I couldn’t revive him.  But then he stirred, breathing more deeply and moving his arms a little.  I pressed in on him with the second healing potion, and now he swallowed it of his own accord.  He breathed a little easier, moved more smoothly, and opened his eyes to look at me.

Shocked, of course.  “Lum,” he rasped, his voice weak.  “What in Azura’s name are you doing here?”

I didn’t let myself scream at him while he was still faint.  “Looking for you.  I heard all about the mission from your _uncle._ ”  He sighed and closed his eyes, slumping back into the pillows.  “Why didn’t you tell me?  I would never have wanted this if I had known!”

“When he told me – how much – it was the only idea I had.”

“But why – you’re not dying any more, are you?”

He looked strangely at me, gave what he could of a laugh.  “No, I don’t think so.”

“Then you’re not getting another potion until you tell me why you did all this.  You could have just helped me get the money.  You could have stalled for time.  You could have told me _no._   Anything else!”

He winced, probably still from physical pain as well as my sharpness.  “I just wanted to be sure you would be safe.  You shouldn’t yell at me.”

“But you could have _died,_ you idiot mer!  What was I supposed to do with myself if you _died?_ ”  His eyes widened.  “Why did you do it?” I insisted.

An even heavier sigh than the first one.  “Because I love you, Lum.”

I handed over the next potion and sat there, stunned.  He didn’t drink it right away:  he just held it as he stared through me.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” I muttered.

His look when he answered was soft but a little guarded.  “Would it have done me any good?”

The tears were threatening to come back, and I rubbed at my face a little as I laughed at him.  “So, what, you were going to wait for _me_ to say it first?  I wasn’t even sure what it _was._   You know that I was raised by wolves.”

He took my hand, his eyes uncertain.  “Lum…?”

“You’re everything to me!” I snarled.  “Drink your damned potion!”

He obeyed, too surprised not to.  Then I climbed on top of him and started to kiss him.  He groaned and grabbed me to him urgently, his eyes sliding shut.  He tasted like medicine, but I didn’t care.  I licked it from his lips as I ran my hands up and down his chest.  Up and down over the stupid uniform that had almost gotten him killed – I yanked it open and bent down to kiss the chest wound that had already healed over into a fading dent in his skin.

“Is this safe?” he whispered, but his hands were already in my hair, pulling loose my braids.

“No one got out, and my people are watching.”  I eased the shirt away from his shoulders, revealing the other closed wound in his shoulder.

“When did you get _people?_ ”

I grinned and licked his collarbone.  “When you weren’t looking.”

He laughed a little.  “I missed you.”  He tried to sit the rest of the way up to embrace me, but I pushed him back down.

“Stay there.  You’re still healing.”

He stroked a finger along my jawline and smiled.  “You’re still vicious.”

With a cheerful nod I rose and peeled his trousers away from him, then hurried through stripping off my own clothes and returned to his side.  As I climbed back into bed, I crawled over him slowly, pausing to take his erection into my mouth and caress it with my tongue.  By the time I straddled him again he was panting, and his eyes were hazy with desire.

He pulled me down into another kiss, biting gently at my lips.  “Lum,” he whispered.  “Do you really?”

I giggled at how easy he made it for me.  “Do I really what?”

He growled and pulled at my hair.  “Do you really have to be such a brat?”

Relenting, I brought my lips to his ear.  “Yes, O.  I love you too.”  He smiled and sighed, and I reached down to draw him into me.  It felt so wonderful to have him again, and I moved back and forth over him slowly, reveling in the sensation.

But I didn’t let myself go enough to lose the tease.  I grabbed both of his nipples and growled, “So from now on you’re going to tell me everything, right?”  I tugged, making him gasp.

His eyes narrowed, a mischievous look.  “As you say.”  His hand swept up my thigh to my hip, and then he brought his thumb onto my clit and began to move it in time with me.  When I froze for a second, shocked by pleasure, so did he.  “Keep moving,” he grinned, “or I’ll stop.”

It was more and more difficult.  He knew me well enough to match his pressure to my responses, and as I rode him my limbs started to tremble.  He watched me struggle, and smiled, and kept himself passive except for his hand.

All my nerves were trying to fire at once, and I needed to stop, to let go of control for one second so I could orgasm.  He saw my hesitation before I had even slowed down, and shook his head.  “Keep moving!”

I was shaking.  “O – I can’t – ” I gasped and reared back, and now he sat up and placed his hand at the small of my back, happily accepting my desperate kisses as he adjusted himself, drawing up his legs.  Then he laid me down with my head at the foot of the bed, and took control of our rhythm, thrusting wonderfully hard now that he’d gotten even with me.  I clawed into his back without fear of going too far:  he didn’t mind even when I made him bleed.

I loved him.  For a moment I couldn’t even remember that there was such a thing as other people.  Then his eyes widened, and he gasped and froze, and I felt his body tense and release.  I pulled him down into one more long, slow kiss as he stroked my hair.

He nipped at the side of my neck.  “If you and your _people_ get out now, they may not follow you.”

I twined my fingers into his hair.  “I beg your pardon?”

“I can’t go, Lum.  This is too important, even if it was my uncle’s idea.  Drothan is crazy, and if he’s right about this place he’s going to end up with an army _and_ a weapon from a Daedric Lord.”

“Then I’ll stay and take it from him.  That’s what I do.”

“It’s not that simple, or I’d have done it already.  He’s sealed himself in somewhere down there, and nobody knows how to even reach him.  And there’s something else wrong.  This place is huge, and old, and – there’s talk of vampires.”

“These are all reasons you shouldn’t be here alone, O.  I brought you reinforcements, and we’re not leaving.  You can lead us in if you have to stay, but I’m not going anywhere without you again.”

He smirked and shook his head, helpless in the face of my logic.  “You’d think it would take me more than a couple of months to forget how stubborn you are.” 

“You’d think.”

We dressed and came down the stairs, to find that Zedrick had posted himself at the barracks door, sending the others to watch the adjoining tunnels.  He looked Othrelos up and down, his arms crossed.  “So you’re Othrelos, then.  You killed two of my men.”

Othrelos shifted his weight uncomfortably.  “I’m sorry.  I didn’t know who you were.”

Zedrick stood firm for a moment, but then he shrugged.  “Sure, nothing personal.  And Melly almost got you, so I guess that makes it even.  Welcome aboard.”  He offered his hand to shake, and Othrelos took it, not without hesitation.  “Too bad about Yinz’r, but nobody liked Scurvy John much anyway.”  With that, he stepped away and started waving to the sentries to gather back to us.

“ _Scurvy John_ ,” Othrelos muttered to me.  “Your people are pirates?”  He frowned in confusion.  “ _Land_ pirates?”

“Usually ship pirates,” I smiled.  “This is a personal favor.”

“Favor nothing!” Zedrick said cheerfully as he came back toward us.  “You should see what some of these bastards have got.  The take from this is going to be amazing.”  Othrelos raised his eyebrows at the pirate’s avaricious grin.

My love’s reception with the rest of the group was mixed.  Kovan accepted him with his kind’s usual racial camaraderie; Melliwin, with a cool, professional nod and a touch to her bow, grudging respect for a fellow marksman; but Jak smiled with a hint of malice I didn’t like.

“I hope that was worth making us wait around for you,” he said to Othrelos.  “Of course, it usually is, with her.”

Zedrick shot him a warning look.  He was always the more sensible one.  “Shut up, Jak.”

Jak’s eyes were still on Othrelos.  “What?  You’re not the jealous type, are you, Dunmer?  You’ve picked the wrong girl if you are.”

Oh, gods, not a fight.  Not here.  That was the last thing we needed.

But Othrelos waved it off with a sickly smile.  “I don’t have the right to be jealous.  We didn’t have that kind of arrangement.”

Jak looked a little disappointed as Zedrick hurried him aside for stern lecturing.  Othrelos took the opportunity to whisper into my ear.  “That said, it’s a conversation I’d like to have later.”  I nodded and gave him a little hug of relief.  “You _have_ been with that man, then,” he added, and watched the two men as they spoke in hushed tones and angry gestures.  “The dark one, too.”

I sighed.  “Yes.”  I didn’t think it was the moment to add, _at the same time._   “We’ve established that I’m a self-absorbed brat, haven’t we?  I didn’t know how _I_ felt, let alone how you felt.”  I thought about my mother again, and leaned into him dejectedly.  “It’s not who I want to be any more.”

“Ssh.”  He pulled me in tighter and nestled his face in my hair.  “We’ll deal with it later.”

Othrelos joined Kovan in the front of the party, and we started moving again.  The caverns seemed to go on forever.  The eastern passage Jak had prevented from being used for escape led to a forge, and there alone there were endless twists and turns and hidden ways.  And more enemies – some of them Khajiit and Argonian servants, who despite everything that was wrong with Morrowind’s treatment of them and despite having working tools for weapons, fought us to the death.  That was depressing.  At least it was depressing to me:  my pirates were more comfortable, and any discomfort they might have felt was more than compensated in their eyes by the glorious plunder they were finding.

Two levels of forge and a mine in between, and at the end of it all we realized that none of these passages led us where we needed to go.  “You could have told us this was a dead end, mate,” said Jak.

“Didn’t ask,” Othrelos answered.  “Anyway, I thought you wouldn’t want to leave this big a group of opponents at our back.  Or this big a haul.”  Even Jak was compelled to grant the point. 

We went back the way he had come, only to find that more soldiers had come through the western passages and found their friends dead, which meant that we had another major battle on our hands.  This time Melliwin and Othrelos stood together and fired in perfect alternation as if they’d trained together, providing the rest of us with rather good cover as we rushed in with swords and cutlasses raised.

We made impressively quick work of them this time, and as the pirates collected their valuables, I had another moment to talk to Othrelos.  “Is this difficult for you?  Since you’ve been living here with them?”

“No.”  He brushed his fingers affectionately across my forehead, pushing back a lock of hair that had escaped the braids.

“How long have you been here?”

He shrugged.  “Month and a half.”

“And you don’t feel anything?”

“I wasn’t here to make friends, Lum.  When you do this kind of assignment you don’t let yourself connect to the people around you, in case you have to do something like this to them.”  He breathed out loudly.  “I don’t _like_ it, which is why I didn’t want to end up in this line of work, but I know how to _do_ it.”

That turned his line of thought, and he frowned.  “Lum… did he send you?  Did you make some kind of deal with him?”

Of course he was still going to be worried about that.  I smiled.  “I sent myself, and the deal I have with him is that he is going to leave us both alone if he doesn’t want any more trouble from pirates.”

“Ah.”  He grinned.  Then he stopped grinning, abruptly.  “They seem to be quite fond of you.”

“They should be.  Do you know how much I paid for them?”

That didn’t seem to reassure him completely, but it was time to move again.  Othrelos advised us to take the higher of the western passages, and this turned out to be because the next cavern was another large one, this time with a deep cleft in its center.  On our side there was one isolated building that we sneaked into and out of without much issue, but to reach the other buildings we were going to have to cross a lit bridge.  Othrelos tapped Kovan and the two of them strolled across confidently.  Othrelos actually called out to the sentries standing at the western edge of the cleft, his voice casual.

And they hailed him in a perfectly friendly manner as he approached them.  Because, of course, they knew him.

He led them in polite and meandering conversation as the rest of us crept across the bridge and back into the shadows.  No alarms raised, nothing unusual going on, just a fellow soldier taking a new recruit around the grounds, acquainting him with everything.  That made it easy to clear one building at a time rather than fighting back a flood of them outside.

Frathen Drothan, as Othrelos had said, was not in his quarters.  His journal was, though.  At a glance there seemed to be several uses of some huge Dunmeri word I didn’t understand, so for the moment I just tucked it into my shirt to wait until we had cleared the area so I could ask our Dunmeri about it.

The other building belonged to a commander – who seemed to be in the final stages of dying from wounds he’d received from the Morag Tong assassin who lay dead in the corner.  As the leader and the one who could feel all the glorious enchantments on the dead assassin’s armor, I claimed that prize for myself.

Othrelos and Melliwin shot down the sentries outside, and that was the top of the cleft handled.  “What about the bottom?” I asked.

“They won’t hear us up here,” Othrelos said, “but I think that’s the way down to where Drothan is.  Except that no one can get in.”  He joined the others in rifling through the commander’s possessions, and seized on something that looked like a large, faintly glowing pearl.  “A bezoar,” he said, picking it up.  “More valuable in Morrowind – I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in Cyrodiil.”

“Wait, did I see that word?” I muttered, pulling the journal back out of my shirt.  “Oh,” I added as I started reading it more carefully, “and what’s this one here?”

I pointed it out to him, and he read it aloud.  “ _Nefarivigum._   Honestly, I don’t know.”

“Too bad, because it seems to be what he’s looking for.  Damn the king and the houses, Nefarivigum, doom to the Empire, Nefarivigum…”  I said the next bit much louder than I meant to.  “Mehrunes’ Razor!”

I’d done enough reading as I grew up in a Mages’ Guild hall to know what that was.  The soul-stealing weapon created by the same Daedric Lord who had caused the Oblivion Crisis, and more than one major upheaval to more than one kingdom before that.  _Fabulous._

“Ah, here’s the bezoar.  It’s enchanted to open the door at the bottom of the cleft in case of an emergency.  There should be two.  We need both.”

Othrelos turned and looked around at the others.  “I’m sure we picked it up along the way.  It’s shiny.  Whose bag did it end up in?”

“Mine,” said Jak, with another unpleasant grin.

Great.

Othrelos stepped toward him with a hand out.  “Let’s have it, then.”

“And what do I get?”

“We need it for the mission,” Othrelos said calmly, as Zedrick graced his friend with a warning scowl.

“It’s not _my_ mission,” Jak snarled, “and you’re not paying me anything to make it mine, so far.  If anything, you’re planning to take something _away._ ”  He turned to look at me.

“You hadn’t struck me as the jealous type, Jak,” I said.

“I’m not.  It doesn’t mean I want to lose access entirely.  But that’s what _you_ want, isn’t it, Dunmer?  But maybe for your ‘mission’ you’ll be more willing to negotiate.  Do I get one last go at her?”

Othrelos narrowed his eyes and tensed, and Zedrick stepped between the two with an angry look of his own at Jak.  I went around both O and Zedrick and smacked Jak hard across the face.

“That’s insubordination, you bastard,” I hissed.  “I am not your _payment_ , and I am not going to stand here while you and Othrelos or anyone else discuss me like I’m some form of barter.  If you’re done answering to me, give me your share of this take and get out.  Or give Othrelos just the bezoar and shut up!”

He gave us the bezoar.  We set off for the passage down to the bottom of the cleft.  This time Othrelos continued to carry the tension for a while, and he forged ahead shooting furiously when we reached the veterans’ barracks, leaving the others to scramble to catch up with him.

The magic seal opened for him, and we moved into a long, narrow passage.  To our right we could see into ruins we could not reach, which meant that we were able to watch one of the Drothmeri be chased down and killed by a pair of – when they had him hurt they ripped into each side of his throat with their teeth.  Vampires, true to the rumor.

And “vampires” did not turn out to mean just one or two, or a handful.  _Numerous_ vampires, a village of vampires, throughout a cavern larger than any we had yet seen.  The structures here were older, made of stone, and most of them were inhabited.  Dead Drothmeri littered the ground.

Others were still fighting.  I raised my hands to tell the others to hold back, and for a while we watched and waited as the battle went on.  No point fighting two enemies at once when patience would leave us only one to deal with.

The vampires won, and then we had to find the way past them ourselves.

I couldn’t say what made us any luckier than the Drothmeri, but somehow, we were.  We moved painfully slowly, as quiet as could be, and perhaps that was part of it.  When we found one standing alone, Kovan or I crept up behind and slit its throat – except for the one who heard me.  She must have been a matriarch, because it took the lot of us to bring her down, and I took a potion to make sure I wouldn’t turn.

When we found several, Othrelos and Melliwin rained arrows, and the rest of us hit them with everything we had.  Three potions for Jak and one for Zedrick.

The buildings were all littered with the dead, both Drothmeri and vampires.  In the last, as we descended the steps, we could hear someone talking, and we stopped.  Only Kovan, Othrelos and I moved forward, being the quietest, all with our weapons drawn.

A male in red robes, and just before he turned to face us, we realized that he was muttering to himself.  When he spun around, his face was Dunmer, and crazed, and a fireball was forming in his hand.

These past months Tamriel had been settling for an Arch-Mage who was only rumored to be mad, when apparently one could procure an Arch-Mage who really _was_.  Othrelos shot instantly, and as the arrow pierced Drothan’s throat his spell gargled away into nothing.  Kovan and I rushed him and cut him to pieces before he could do anything else.

When he was dead, I turned toward Othrelos.  “You’re rather good at that,” I said.

“I didn’t run because I was _bad_ at it.  I ran because I didn’t _like_ it.”

Remaining with us were a lowered gate and a standing casket, in which was – it looked like a dremora.  We waved for the others to join us:  Melliwin brought me a journal she had found in a room nearby.  I was the one they relied on for reading.

It was Drothan’s diary of his progress here.  “Apparently this is the Nefarivigum he was talking about,” I said, then read for a minute.  “That’s the Razor behind the gate.  And the dremora is some kind of guardian, and – oh.”  I slammed the journal shut.

“What?”  said Othrelos.

“His theory was that to open the gate, someone would have to take out the dremora’s heart and eat it.”

There was a moment of silence.  Without thinking, we all turned to face Melliwin, our only Bosmer.  She shook her head, scowling with disgust.  “No!  I’m not the one who killed it, and it’s not even _fresh._ ”

Silence again.  Then Zedrick growled.  “Fuck this.  Lads!”  He strode toward the gate, and his crew followed him, leaving me and Othrelos watching them.  They grabbed onto the bottom of the gate and, on Zedrick’s count, heaved upward.  Groans and strained looks, as if the gate was very heavy, and awful creaking noises.

They’d managed to raise it a foot or so when the dremora began to move.  I shouted a warning as I drew my sword, and Othrelos shot the thing in the chest, but it was not fatal.  The pirates let go of the gate, and it dropped with a loud thud.  I attacked, landing one good cut to its stomach but taking one to my chest in exchange.  But that meant that the dremora’s focus was on me, and it didn’t see Zedrick coming.

The daedric warrior fell in front of me, and as I fell to my knees I could hear the gate creaking open, and feel someone take hold of me from behind.  Helped me gently back into a lean against his chest, pressed a bottle into my hand with his dark one.  Othrelos.  He helped me raise it to my mouth, and then wrapped his arms around my waist and nestled against me as the potion took effect and my wound closed.

When I could stand, which was when Othrelos helped me to my feet, everyone was just standing there, waiting for me.  They hadn’t touched the Razor.  Nobody said why – perhaps because they were waiting for me to do it, or because it was a thing of Dagon and too frightening to touch.  The most hateful of all the Daedric Lords had forged it as a thing of destruction, a sort of weapon far more horrible than I would ever use… but oh, I thought, what a useful deterrent it would be against Fathis and his kind.  No one would dare to come against us again.

So I went in and I took it, felt the hum of its bloodlust in my hand.  The Razor was mine.

 


	12. Jumping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A tale of two Jaks, and the one getting into barroom brawls with Othrelos is the nice one.

There was so much to sell that we had to visit several merchants to unload it all.  In fact we’d reached Bravil by the time we sold off the last of it, and we all had more money than we knew what to do with.  I got it into my fool head that if I took everyone out for a round of drinks, they’d start to get along.

For the first round, everything went fairly well.  Othrelos and Kovan sat together, chatting in a friendly tone in their native tongue.  Jak and Zedrick together, of course, on the other side of the table, and me at the head.  The others one table over, because they were both less important and more neutral.

But in his second cup, Jak started to get surly.  “I think if we’re all sharing a table we should all speak the same language.”

Othrelos responded with a curt nod.  “Sorry.  We weren’t trying to be rude.”

“Sure you were.”  Jak bared his teeth in more of a sneer than a grin.  “I know you don’t like me.”

Zedrick frowned but kept drinking, and Othrelos sighed.  “I didn’t set out to dislike you, but you seem to insist on it.”

“Well, it’s like I said before.  You’re taking something away.”

Othrelos shot me an uncomfortable glance rather than responding.  We hadn’t had time to sit down for that particular conversation yet, so he didn’t know whether I intended to make him my only partner or not.

Unfortunately, Jak read the look quicker than I could respond to it, and beamed.  “Oh, I see,” he chuckled.  “So I’ve still got a shot after all.”

“This is really starting to irritate me, Jak,” I scowled at him as Zedrick kicked him under the table. 

He stopped, and I thought that was the end of it until we’d drunk our fourth round.  Othrelos and I declared it our last, and rose – effortfully – from our seats to go up to bed.  Jak rose too, and staggered over to put a hand around my waist.  I gave his arm a clumsy push that only nudged his hand down onto my ass, and he grinned and leaned in to kiss me.

Othrelos shoved him off of me.  “How many times does she have to say it?”

Jak regarded him with a bleary-eyed smile.  “Do you really think she _means_ it?  She’s putting on a good show for you.”

As I opened my mouth to yell at him, Othrelos shoved him again, harder, red eyes full of rage.  Jak threw a right hook at O’s jaw, connected with a nasty cracking sound, and they both staggered.  O growled and punched the pirate in the stomach, then blocked his answering left cross and landed a second blow to Jak’s face.  Kovan and Zedrick leapt in to pry them apart, but it was a struggle:  they kicked and cursed, and it wasn’t until Melliwin and Tahm stepped in as well that they stopped trying to get at each other.

“It can’t keep being like this,” Zedrick frowned.

“No,” I said, “it can’t.”  I turned to look at Jak, pinned back by Zedrick and Tahm, his face red.  “I don’t see why it’s like this now.  I know you don’t like me this much, Jak.”

He was starting to slump, and his words were slurred.  “Bad enough I always lose them to Zedrick.  Now I’m losing them to a fucking mer.”

“Is that what this is about?” Zedrick cried.  “Again?  This was why we started – damn!”  He turned and looked at me.  “Right.  I’ll take him to sleep this off, and he and I will talk when he’s sober.”  He and Tahm half-carried Jak away, and gradually, the others started to relax.  I turned my attention to Othrelos.

“How’s your jaw?” I asked quietly.

He moved it back and forth a little.  “It could be worse.”

“You don’t have to prove anything, you know.”  I slipped my arms around his waist and snuggled up against him.

His fellow meri released his arms, and he put them around me.  “No?”

“No.  Do you want to have that conversation now?  Would it be better for you if I’m not with anyone else?”

He hugged me a little tighter.  “Yes.”

“Then I won’t be.  There.”  I kissed him on the cheek.  “So don’t let him keep baiting you.”

“Is it really what you want?”  He nuzzled the side of my neck.  “It’s not just to stop us fighting, is it?”

“Of course not.  That’s not how I normally behave, is it?”

Just like I wanted, he laughed a little, and the last of the tension faded.  “No, it isn’t.”  With that, we were finally able to make our way up to bed, where we celebrated our new relationship with a few drunken caresses before falling asleep in our clothes.

We stayed for a couple of days, sleeping more of the time than not.  We’d spent days down that hole with no sense of time, and it was only after we settled down in Bravil that we realized how exhausted we were.

After a few cycles of eating and sleeping, I woke up actually able to think.  Othrelos and I were curled toward each other, his head against my stomach and his arm draped over my thigh.

“O?” I asked softly, stroking his hair.  “Do you think Fathis will keep trying?”

He took a moment to respond.  “I don’t think he’d try to hurt me.  So he shouldn’t try to hurt you either.  If you showed him you have your own force, he won’t escalate and risk his life or ours.”  He stopped and thought.  “I’m not sure that means he’ll give us up entirely, though.”

“Great.  Then you’re definitely coming down to Anvil with me.”

He chuckled.  “That’ll work.  Jak and I living together will be perfect.”

“They’re away most of the time.”  Still, he had a point.  “I’ll buy you a house.”

Up onto his elbow then, looking surprised and a little bit skeptical.  “You’ll buy me a house,” he echoed.

“I’m not sending you back up to the Imperial City when I don’t know yet whether I’ve got Fathis in line.  Anvil’s got me, my pirates, and the Gray Fox, and that’s more than he’s going to dare.  He’d be too far out of his own territory.”  I pulled him up toward me by the hair.  “And I’ll be able to visit you whenever I want.”

“Ah,” he grinned, “there we go.”

A couple of hours later we actually emerged to give the order to move on toward Anvil.  Jak still had a black eye, and kept his distance from Othrelos.  He did come and give me something of an apology, although it was quick and mumbled with his eyes cast down and away from me.  “Know I was an ass.  Sorry.”

“I love him, Jak.  It’s no reflection on you.”

“Yeah.”

So we rode home, and Othrelos got a room at the inn, because it really _wasn’t_ a good idea to put him and Jak too close together, and I started looking for a house.  I didn’t have to go far:  in The Count’s Arms a jaded rich boy was selling his grandfather’s mansion cheap so he could go away to the Imperial City.  I had his asking price, so he gave me the deed.

He said it had been in disuse for a while, and it was too late in the day after too much travel to want to bother with going and cleaning it up, so Othrelos and I stayed the night at the inn anyway.  When we came down in the morning, Amusei was waiting for me.

“I just missed you in Bravil,” he said.  “The Gray Fox is looking for you.  He’s waiting in Cheydinhal.”

“We came _through_ Cheydinhal on the way here.”  I sighed.  Good old Amusei.

“He sent for you personally?” Othrelos asked.  “Do you realize how rare that is?”

I shrugged.  “He’s done it before.”

“Then I’m sorry.  I always thought you were exaggerating.”  He smiled a little.  “You need to go, then.  I’ll work on the house while you’re gone.”

A short breakfast, a long kiss, and a few sweet words, and I was back on a horse on the way to Cheydinhal.  Ganredhel’s house was the one I was supposed to find this time.  It was next to a house that was clearly abandoned, which made me wonder why we hadn’t met there instead. 

Remembering his wishes, now reinforced by my promise to Othrelos, I stood a comfortable distance from him.  “You sent for me?”

He stood to greet me.  “Yes, a good while ago.  Where were you hiding yourself?”

“I’m sorry about that.  It was something important.”

“You and the pirates found your boy, then.”  He grinned at my surprise.  “I do have sources of information, you know.  Did everything work out to your satisfaction?”

It was silly of me to blush.  “Yes, it did.  If Fathis just keeps to himself, it will be nearly perfect.”

“Capital.  Let’s take it as a sign of luck.”  He sighed.  “And I assure you that Fathis is going to keep to himself.  You can even use him as your fence in the Imperial City if you like.  I hear he pays well.”

“What?”  Use Fathis as my fence?  Had he been drinking?

He laughed.  “That _is_ his role in the Guild, you know.  He’s a fence.  And not only does he remember your pirates well enough to have a healthy respect for you, he also has this notion that you have taken on some amount of importance in the Guild.  That you’re being groomed to outrank him, if you don’t already.”

It was hard to resist stepping in flirtatiously, but I had to start breaking the habit.  “Where would he have gotten an idea like that?”

“I can’t imagine.  At any rate, we needed that settled, because you’re going into the Imperial City for me.  You’re looking for a fellow named Jakben.  ‘Earl of Imbel,’ wherever that is.  But he’s in the City.  He’s the last known descendant of a thief named Springheel Jak, who lived three hundred years ago.  He had a pair of magic boots that we require.”

“And Jakben may have them, or know where they are.”  I nodded.

“We’re very close to the great moment now, Luminara.  Don’t dawdle.”

I didn’t.  With both of us trying to create a distance there was no point in lingering. 

It was strange coming back to the Imperial City after so long.  It felt different than I remembered.  More present, somehow.  The beggars, however, were the same, and one of them gave me Jakben’s address in Talos Plaza for a very reasonable price.  They also told me he only tended to go out at night.

Paranoid of me, probably, to think of vampires first.  After all, I’d just come out of a whole city of them.  All the same, I waited until late in the evening to break into the house, so he’d be more likely to be away.

Unfortunately, there was nothing there that gave me any indication about either Springheel Jak or the fate of his boots.  At least not on the main floor or the upper one:  the cellar door had an unpickable lock, which meant I would have to search Jakben himself for the key.  That sounded exciting.

I’d have to pick his pockets.  Even if he was a vampire, it would attract too much attention to kill him out in the street, or have him found murdered in his house.  But if I waited in the house, it would spare me looking for him in the city.  So I waited.

He came in the early morning.  He certainly had the reflexes of a vampire:  he noticed me almost immediately, even though I didn’t make any mistakes.  But instead of attacking, he cringed and professed terror.  A burglar!  Of course I could have the key to the cellar.  I could have anything I wanted, if I only spared his life.

I was skeptical.  But by inclination I was also a thief, not a killer, so I took the key and left him, resolving to pay careful attention to any sounds behind me.

In the cellar were other vampires.  I felt silly about not having the nerve to kill Jakben outright, but that didn’t keep me from drawing the Razor and slicing up his friends.  I had no scruples about killing things that were trying to eat me.

I knew which was Jakben’s coffin because it contained his diary.  Right away it captured my attention:  _I knew a man who was a great thief. He dared steal from Nocturnal herself! How odd that I cannot seem to recall his name. I think we were friends, but I'm not certain._

He’d known the Gray Fox before the cowl.  He _was_ Springheel Jak.

He was right behind me.

I spun on my heel, slicing as I turned, and sure enough, I connected with flesh.  He hissed with pain and fury, fangs bared, as I cut again.  He’d brought a glass sword down with him, and he tried to hit me with that; but he’d expected to take me by surprise.  He was not really prepared for the extent of my resistance.

The Razor made an awful sound the last time I struck at Jakben, and there was a flash as the vampire fell to the ground, sickly white and motionless.  I knew by instinct and reading that this time, Dagon had taken his soul through the sword.  I felt sick.  I must never use the thing again.

As I stood over Jakben’s body collecting my wits, I finally noticed the glimmer of magicka around him.  He was wearing the boots I was after.

Since his cellar had also provided me with several other nice things, I decided to test my luck by looking for Fathis.  He conducted his business in the Elven Gardens District.

He had never been so fawning.  “Luminara!  Delightful to see you.  What brings you to town?”

I blinked at him for a moment before I responded.  “Guild business.  I have some things to sell.”

“Happy to look at them for you.  May I?”  As I pulled things out for him to purchase, he added, with his eyes cast away from me, “Is my nephew well?”

“He is.  We stopped the invasion.”

“Wonderful.  I, ah, don’t imagine you’re of a mind to tell me where he is now, but thank him for me.  He’s always got a job with me if he wants it.”  Now he did glance up.  “Then again, I suppose that if he means to keep working at all, he’ll be working for you.”

“We… haven’t discussed that.”

“Of course not.”  He cleared his throat.  “I hope you understand that I never intended either of you any _harm._   He’s family, of course, and as for you, it’s obvious how he feels about you.  And how the Guildmaster feels, for that matter.”  He paused.  “I am well established as the fence for the Imperial City.  I hope that you will keep that, as well as family, in mind in any future decisions.”

I didn’t know what he was talking about any more, but it seemed prudent not to let on.  “I will.”  I took my money and left him.  He did, indeed, pay me well.

When I got back to Cheydinhal, I tossed the diary into the Gray Fox’s lap first.  “You might have warned me that Jakben _was_ Jak.”

“What are you talking about?”  He skimmed the diary, then scowled at me.  “Do I really look to you like I’m three hundred years old?”

Oh.  I shuffled one foot.  “Well, no.  I’ve been running into so many vampires lately, and for all I knew it was one of the powers of the cowl.”

He relaxed a little.  “It isn’t.  I didn’t know Springheel Jak:  I’m not the original Gray Fox.  The cowl has been handed down within the Guild – usually without much warning about the consequences.”  He snorted.  “I hope to be the last.  At least the last one like this.  That is assuming you’ve got the boots?”  I provided those, and he turned much more cheerful.  “This is it, then.  Now it’s all planning and execution.  Well done, Luminara.  I will let you know when it’s time.”

Again, there was no loitering, just an awkward glance as he paid me.  I was learning how to have one partner at a time, and he was saving himself for a woman who would never know his name.

It was far sadder than my childhood fantasy had been.  Now I couldn’t imagine wanting to be the Gray Fox.

 


	13. What You Get is What You See

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Othrelos's new house is haunted. When he goes with Luminara to pick up the final quest from the Gray Fox, things take an unexpected turn. (sex chapter)

Ironically, I ran into Othrelos in Skingrad.  He was at the inn, and so was the young Benirus, the fellow who had sold me the house in Anvil.  I hurried to their table, embraced my Dunmer, and asked him what he thought he was doing there when we’d agreed he was going to stay in Anvil.

The corners of his mouth quirked upward.  “Yes, about that.  It turns out that there is a small issue with the lovely house you bought me.”  He paused for effect.  “It’s haunted.”

I raised my eyebrows.  “I bought you a haunted house.”

“You did, in fact.  With a lich in the basement.”  He gestured toward Benirus.  “Behind a magical door that only a blood relative can open, apparently, for which reason I’ve invited the previous owner to come back with me.”  The gentleman in question looked embarrassed, and Othrelos added, “Which seemed to me the least he could do, since he knew about it when he sold the property to you.”

I laughed.  “Oh, I’m so sorry.  It figures, doesn’t it?”

“It does.”  He hugged me again, smiling.  “No harm done.  It made for a rather exciting first night staying there, but it wasn’t more than I could handle.  And the _building_ is lovely, if we can just clear out the freeloaders.”

Benirus remained quiet and awkward the rest of the way down to Anvil; I got the impression that he wanted not only the issue with the house but the whole matter of his family and connection to Anvil behind him.  It was Othrelos who told me why:  the alleged lich was none other than the Benirus patriarch. 

Did anyone ever get to have a reasonable family?  Maybe not.

I’d only gotten to look at the house on the outside when I bought it.  Maybe in retrospect that was an obvious mistake, but it still looked big, lovely, and even well kept as we approached it.  Inside it was even still furnished, but everything was dingy and torn and out of sorts, many items also broken or knocked over.  None of that was worse than I’d expected either; I’d thought that cleaning and redecorating would be straightforward enough.

I hadn’t figured on the ghosts.  But here they came now, just as reported, and I was glad we’d known about them so we could have our bits of silver and magic ready.  We splattered ectoplasm on the furniture and the walls.  Afterward, looking around, I realized we were really just adding to previous layers of it, blended by time into the dust and cobwebs and mildew.

“You?”  I asked Othrelos, looking at the old mess beneath our new mess.

“Most of mine were upstairs, I think, but maybe.  The basement is this way.”  He led the way through the door and downstairs.  The magical door could not really be referred to as a _secret_ door, since its glowing symbols were obvious from across the room.

The Benirus boy – I supposed that, in sympathy with his family problem, I ought to think of him as Velwyn – stepped in front of the door and started making awkward, half-embarrassed gestures.  It didn’t look like he knew what he was doing, but the magic of the door was cued to his blood, not his skill:  the wall cracked open before us.

Velwyn vanished up the stairs immediately.  I didn’t have to worry about calling him by the right name after all.

I lit the way for us and we crept into the dank hole.  On each side were tables stacked with old tomes and chests – I vowed to crack them open later.  For the moment, our focus was on the crypt in the center, and the bones lying there.  And the voice that echoed around us.

“I feel you,” it groaned.  “You have my hand.” 

I looked at Othrelos, and he nodded.  “I do.  I found it in the house, along with the note that told me what we were dealing with.”

“You refer to the sins of my past,” the voice said.  “I dabbled in evil magic.  But Cairihill defeated me, and for years I have lain here, repenting of my deeds.  Waiting to be made whole so that I may pass over in peace.  Please.  Please bring me my hand.”

I edged closer to Othrelos and whispered in his ear.  “I’m skeptical.”

He smiled just a little, without turning to look at me.  “Are you really?”

We stood and stared at the body for a moment.  “You have fire arrows, don’t you?” I asked.  He nodded.  “Then be ready to shoot.  I’ll take the hand.”  Now he did look at me, and I shrugged.  “He could be telling the truth.  And if he isn’t, it’ll be exciting, won’t it?”

He reached into his bag and gave me the hand.  It was still in one piece, held together by its mummified skin.  I found it disgusting on principle, even though it didn’t feel much different than a dry piece of leather.  As I came closer to Lorgren’s body, I saw that the rest of him matched the hand.

Lichdom wasn’t something that just happened.  People did this to themselves on purpose.  I couldn’t understand the reasoning – well, and hardly anyone could.  Even necromancers and vampires looked down on liches, thought they were crazy to begin the process.  And even crazier after they powdered their own brains.

I put the hand down at the end of the stumped arm.  For a moment, nothing happened.  But when I stepped back, I saw the wisps of magicka start to weave the parts back together, and motion return to the reunified body.

“I have always marveled,” the voice said, now centered much more strongly around the undead skull of the lich, “at the gullibility of humans.”

Had he really not noticed?  No:  his focus was entirely on me.  He had risen to a sitting position when Othrelos hit him with the first fire arrow, and I shook my head.  “There, you see.  Powdered brains.”

Lorgren turned to look at his attacker, raising the staff that had been lying next to him; I jumped forward and started to wrestle him for it.  In my focus on gaining control of the staff I could barely hear Othrelos screaming at me that he didn’t want to shoot me by mistake.

When the lich’s grasp suddenly gave way I fell back onto the floor.  I jumped up again as quickly as I could, aimed the staff, and fired.  That combined with the half a dozen arrows sticking out of his torso finally laid him back to rest.

“I could have _shot_ you,” Othrelos growled, racing toward me.

“You wouldn’t have.  I trust you.”

“Hmph.”  He threw his arms around me and kissed me on the head.  “Well.  I’m sure you want to go back and see whether those books are valuable.  I’ll check out this end.”

The books were full of spells I didn’t think I’d ever want to try but would be perfectly willing to sell.  I was sure the Mages’ Guild would want them – and maybe, since the books were oriented toward necromancy and lichdom, they would even pay a little extra just to make sure they didn’t end up out on the open market.  Other than that, a few gems and the staff were the main items of interest.  Hopefully, combined they would pay to finally fix up the house.  And maybe seal up the basement.

The house above us no longer had the foreboding feeling of a haunted place, but it was no tidier for that, and we decided to rest elsewhere before tackling that issue.  Velwyn Benirus was waiting for us at The Count’s Arms, relieved that we had defeated his grandfather and also still a bit guilty about his own part in the whole affair.  He offered to pay to have the whole place cleaned and refurnished – the way we’d cleaned up the blemish on his family and his luck, he said.

Was it that simple?  Once the evidence of one’s sordid origins were erased, could one just walk away and become someone clean and new?  Or would it follow you?  Or would you just become _no one_ , like the poor Gray Fox?

Still, if he was sincere, that was fabulous.  And after all, we wouldn’t be going right back to the house anyway, because Amusei was also there to see us.

“The Gray Fox is waiting for you,” he said, “at the home of Othrelos in the Imperial City.”

Othrelos and I looked at each other, and then he turned and raised his eyebrows at Amusei.  “ _My_ house?”

“Oh!  I didn’t know you were Othrelos.  That’s kind of funny.”

I clucked my tongue.  “You didn’t know this was Othrelos, but you gave me an assignment from the Gray Fox in front of him anyway.  Your subtlety still leaves something to be desired, Amusei.  Maybe you should consider becoming a pirate.  I can set you up.”

Amusei walked away looking confused.  I turned back to my secretive Dunmer.  “It’s your house?  I always figured it was Mandil’s, the way you tiptoed around her.”

He answered with a bashful smile.  “No.  I’m just a very kindly landlord.”

I stepped in close and took a playful swipe at his shoulder.  “Then why didn’t you just invite me in with you in the first place?”

He wrapped his arms around my waist and touched his forehead to mine.  “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

Eventually we did remember that we were standing in the middle of a public place and that we were expected elsewhere.  As we rode toward the Imperial City he started to get a little bit nervous, even though I told him how conciliatory his uncle had been when I’d last seen him.

It wasn’t until we were actually in the city that _I_ thought to get nervous, about something else entirely.  “O,” I muttered, tugging at his sleeve as we stood in front of his door.  “I have to tell you something first, in case it gets awkward.”

His lovely eyes scanned my face and read it almost instantly.  “You’ve been with him, too.  The Gray Fox himself.”  He chuckled a little at my discomfort.  “I have to admit, I’m impressed.  I didn’t know he ever let anyone that close to him.”  He took my hands and squeezed them, his eyes dropping.  “And… you’re quite sure it’s me you want?”

I squeezed his hands back, because it seemed more appropriate than slapping him silly.  “I’m completely sure.”

He smiled.  “Then I won’t let it be awkward.  I promise.”

The Gray Fox was seated comfortably in a chair that sat atop Mandil’s favorite rug.  He spread his hands gracefully and grinned as we closed the door behind us.  “Forgive me the unexpected visit, Othrelos.  I wanted the chance to see Luminara’s young man.  I’m sorry it’s been so long since I looked in on you for your own work, but we discussed your – unique position then, of course.”

Othrelos nodded.  “Too skilled to need direction, too related to Fathis to raise too high if we didn’t want that to become known.”  He added with a shrug, “Not ambitious enough to mind.”

“And yet you’ve found a way around it, whether or not you realize it yet.  You’re lucky.”  He turned to look at me.  “You’re both lucky.  Let’s hope it holds.”

“You’ve got a job for me?” I asked.

“ _The_ job, Luminara.  The one that will place you among the greatest thieves who ever lived.  The one that will – do you think you’re ready?”

“Just tell me what it is.”

“You’re going to break into the Palace and steal one of the Elder Scrolls.”

I stood and blinked silently for a moment.  “Yes.  That will be impressive.”

He chuckled.  “I’ve planned out your route for you.  You’ll get in through the sewers.  Once you’re in the Imperial Library, you’ll be impersonating a woman named Celia Camoran.  Here, I’ve written it all out.”

He handed me the note, and I skimmed it on the spot:

 

_1) Activate the Old Way using the Glass of Time. It is located inside the Imperial Palace. I do not know what it looks like or exactly where to find it._

_2) Find the entrance to the Old Way. It is rumored to be somewhere in the sewers under the Imperial City._

_3) Inside the Old Way is an entrance to the heart of the Imperial Palace. Savilla's Stone was only able to scry the two most important obstacles. For one of them you will need to use the Boots of Springheel Jak._

_4) To enter the Imperial City you must use the Arrow of Extrication to unlock the final door._

_5) Inside the Imperial Palace you must find the Imperial Library. On the bottom floor is some sort of viewing room._

_6) I have arranged to have a particular scroll made available in the Chamber. The blind monks that care for the scrolls are expecting Celia Camoran, but you will take her place. Just find the chair assigned to visitors to the library. You must not speak, or they will know it is not her. Just let them bring you the scroll._

_7) Once you have the scroll, retrace your steps and deliver it to me. Of course the chances of something going wrong with this plan are very high. When that happens, you'll just have to get creative._

I smirked at him.  “Creative.  I’ll have to be, if I have to shoot the Arrow.  I can barely shoot myself in the foot.”

“So I’ll go with you,” Othrelos said.

“See?” the Gray Fox smiled.  “Lucky.  You happened to bewitch a mer who can make the shot.”  He rose to his feet, looking a bit agitated. 

I frowned, and unable to stop my own instincts, I stepped in closer and touched his shoulder.  “What’s wrong?  Don’t you think I can do it?”

“That’s not it at all.  I’m so sure you can do it that I’ve finally started to think about what comes after that.”

It didn’t take me long to follow his thought.  “If it works, you’re going to go to her,” I whispered.  “And she might refuse you.”

He nodded, his eyes cast down.  I could feel his breath.  “And if it doesn’t, then I can never try.”

We stood frozen and silent for a moment, and the raspy voice that finally spoke from behind me took us both by surprise.  “Go ahead, Lum.”

I looked over my shoulder at Othrelos, who was watching us with heavy-lidded eyes, his lips slightly parted.  “Go ahead and kiss him,” he said.  “I can see you thinking about it.”

I opened my mouth to say _But I promised you I wouldn’t,_ but the look on his face was intent – aroused.  He wasn’t saying it to be generous; he wanted to see me do it.  I turned back toward the Gray Fox, and just like that, there was no more point in thinking about it.  I lifted my chin and brushed my lips against his.  I felt him gasp just slightly, and he leaned closer against me as he started to kiss me back.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw his eyes open, watching over my shoulder, as uncertain as I was about how much Othrelos was really going to allow.  Our answer was a hand on my back, sliding up to entwine with the Gray Fox’s at my shoulder as Othrelos grazed down the side of my neck.

I shivered happily and took his involvement as encouragement to go forward.  I started to open the Gray Fox’s shirt, and he responded in kind; then O’s hands eased my shirt from my shoulders.  I was relieved that this time, the Gray Fox seemed to be trusting me not to touch the cowl, at least for now; it would have been embarrassing to be spun around from it with a witness.

Four hands on me, the Fox’s tongue in my mouth and Othrelos’s breath on the back of my neck – it was divine.  One thing with pretty pirates, but now, with partners I actually cared about –

The Gray Fox broke away from our kiss, exchanged a glance with Othrelos behind me, and began to nibble his way down the front of my body.  Othrelos cradled my head in one hand and turned it to the side so that he could kiss me.  I lifted one hand to stroke his hair, but then tried to break from him and look down when I felt my other partner pulling my pants down.  I couldn’t move.  He promptly brought his arms up between my legs and hooked them around my thighs, prying them apart, and O kept one arm around my waist and the other hand on my face, so I was pinned.

I could only watch Othrelos cast his own look downward, and could not look myself, when the Fox snaked his tongue into me.  I gasped and arched back into Othrelos, and I felt him grinning as we kissed.  I grabbed into his hair more forcefully, moaning at the pleasure that was dancing through my whole body.  The Gray Fox dug his fingers deeper into the flesh of my thighs and licked harder, and my Dunmer continued to watch, his free hand now wandering up to my breasts.  I squealed and started to shake as he brushed and pinched my nipples.

A growl from beneath me.  The Gray Fox leaned back and pulled me down to kneel over him.  This was what it took, then, to drive the doubt and guilt out of his face:  there was nothing in it now but want.  He grabbed me into a hungry kiss, and I was the one who hesitated, until I felt O’s warm hand caressing my back, again giving me his permission to continue.  Then I let myself melt against my Guildmaster as he laid us down.  His hands left me for a moment, and when they returned, they urged me down onto him, and he slid into me easily.  He panted for me, biting his lip as I rocked my hips back and forth.  Smiling, I reared up a little and dragged my nails gently across his chest.  Not quite as rough as I would be with Othrelos if he were the one under me.

But Othrelos was _behind_ me, and after a moment of silently watching, he started to stroke my skin again, and I could hear him breathing deeply.  I felt one hand wander down to where I was joined with the Gray Fox, caressing us both, carrying our wetness back toward my ass.

I smiled a little, though I forced myself not to turn and ask.  _Othrelos?  Really?_   But I licked my lips as I felt him press up behind me and whisper into my ear.  “Slow down a little.”

The next time I rocked back, I felt him start to press into me, and I almost fell forward onto my elbows.  Both men took me by the hips for a moment, slowly guiding me and each other into a rhythm we could sustain together.  I let myself be led:  I couldn’t see straight, and everything was trembling.  But I could hear both of them panting, not much further from being overwhelmed than I was.  The Fox let his hands roam over me; Othrelos grabbed into my hair and used it to keep pulling me back toward him.  I clawed into the rug beneath us as if I wanted to draw blood from it.  Our movement was so intense and so agonizingly slow.

It was Othrelos who broke ranks first, now holding my hips still as he pounded into me.  I whined happily, and the Gray Fox sped up a bit as well:  moreso when Othrelos came and there was no more need to stay in sync with him.  He pulled me down into one more fierce kiss as he finished and then went wearily still.

For the first minute or so of silence, I was as happy as I had ever been.  Then I started to wonder if it meant that things between the two most important people in my life were about to get very awkward.

I needn’t have.  The Gray Fox dragged one hand casually up my side and smirked, “That scroll isn’t going to steal itself, you know.”

I giggled as I dismounted him.  “I didn’t realize we were in such a hurry.”

“Of course we’re in a hurry!  Why would I tell you to do something I didn’t want _done?_ ”  But with all his usual snarling he also politely handed me my shirt.  And when we were all dressed and parting ways, he looked at me standing with Othrelos and smiled.  “I like you together,” he said.  “Don’t mess it up.”

“Did I?”  I asked Othrelos once we were outside.

It took him a few seconds to realize what I was asking.  “Mess it up?  No.  I started it, remember.”

“And it was all right?”

He chuckled and hugged me to him a little as we walked.  “Enlightening, really.  I know you made me a promise, and I love you for doing it.  But maybe sometimes we can make an exception if we make it together.”

I flushed at how nice a thought that was.  “Really.”

“Really.”  He paused for effect.  “Just don’t ask me for Jak.”

I laughed.  “I wasn’t going to.”

 


	14. After Every Plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How to steal an Elder Scroll.

So this was the essence of the plan:  to go into the only publicly accessible part of the Imperial Palace, the meeting hall of the Council, turn an hourglass, and leave again.  Then we were to go out to the Arboretum and sneak through a sequence of hidden doors, tunnels and sewers, all just to reach another part of the Palace.

It was a testament to how well-guarded the place was, now that it was too late to do anyone any good.  Now that it was Chancellor Ocato who lived there and not an Emperor.  Ocato’s bad luck that he was born an Altmer, the race men equated with slavery and megalomania:  it made the rumor that he’d secretly been behind the entire Oblivion Crisis that much quicker to spread.  In fact the mistrust might have spilled over onto the Arch-Mage and from her to the Altmeri in general, except that she’d – well.  It was hard to tell exactly what had happened, because the story was already getting swallowed up in the same kind of religious miracle talk that had risen up around Martin Septim.  But somehow she was gone, and the temptation to hold her whole race at fault was somehow gone with her.

 The only meaning it all had to me was since it had happened so recently, the locals had a lot of other things to think about besides me and Othrelos wandering into the Council chambers.  All routes up were guarded, locked, and impassable, but this was not equally true of the route _down._   One easy lock, one inattentive guard.  What harm could anyone do in the basement?

The hourglass was surprisingly large, and Othrelos gallantly stepped forward to move it without my asking.  And that was that – nothing we could see or hear changed.  “Think it did anything?” I muttered.

He shrugged.  “I suppose we’ll find out.”

For as many of my fellow thieves swore by using the sewers to move through town unseen, I had never tried it before.  I promptly swore to myself that I never would again.  It was dank, and dark even when I cast lights for us, and the stench was awful.  That was to say nothing of the crawling mass of mud crabs underfoot – peculiarly aggressive animals.  I was torn between wanting to make a point of eating them in the future, in vengeance, or making a point of _not_ eating them because of how many I’d encountered in filthy sewers.

Othrelos realized before I did where our route was leading us, and slowed down, looking concerned.  “Under the Bloodworks,” he whispered to me, and immediately I remembered the rumor that worried him.  I’d always taken it as just an ironic joke:  vampire lair under the Bloodworks of the Arena, ha ha.  Anyway, it wasn’t as if this would be the first time we’d dealt with vampires.  Not even the first time lately.

All the same, we began to take more care about being hidden and quiet, and that was for the best, since the vampires really were there.  Luckily for us, they were not banded together for battle like the last ones we’d met:  they were each off in their own little corners of their shared territory.  We were able to avoid most of them entirely, and those we did have to fight, we fought two to one.

Actually, there were probably one or two vampires we avoided twice, because this part of the sewer was as unfamiliar to Othrelos as it was to me, and even more than usually twisted in on itself.  But eventually we found the locked gate for which the Gray Fox had given us a key, the one that should lead into the section of sewer directly underneath the Palace District.

It always feels a little bit like cheating, using a key.  But sometimes it’s the only option.

The way through the heart of the sewage system was much more straightforward, and strangely, also featured vampires.  I wondered how they’d gotten hold of a key to the gate – we did find that they had one – and then wondered if it had been a vampire from whom the Gray Fox had gotten our key.

When we passed through the door at the far end, we knew we had to have reached the Old Way.  Suddenly the architecture was quite different:  pale and squared off and formal and elaborate, like –

“Like an Ayleid ruin,” Othrelos said, confirming my thought.

“I guess it makes sense,” I answered.  “If the Palace is really what’s left of White Gold Tower.”

He turned to look at me with a mischievous grin I knew well.  “Welkynd stones?”

I smiled too.  “Maybe.  We’ll have to keep an eye out.”

Here it was wraiths instead of vampires.  The first one hurt me before we got it down, and while I drank my potion I felt stupid that I hadn’t changed weapons in anticipation.  Ancient ruins, high risk of wraiths.  Obvious in hindsight.  On the other hand, we did both immediately start to think in terms of traps, which meant that the maces that swung down from the ceiling in one hallway failed to hit either of us in the head.

We crept through room after room, hall after hall.  It seemed to go on endlessly, palace enough for ten Emperors, all abandoned and left to the wraiths – oh, and zombies as well.  And no Welkynd stones, although we found chests with money and other small items.  I had no idea any more what time it was, and a little wearily, I thought of how funny it would be if I ended up calling on the keepers of the Scrolls in the wee hours of morning.

One of the many halls finally opened out into a large room with a balcony that loomed over us, and at the other end –

I jerked Othrelos back by the shoulder and crouched, recognizing the shapes.  Dark Welkynd stones, on either side of the facing hallway that was the only other opening into the room.  He shot me a look of confused alarm as I hissed and stared at them… and nothing happened.

He stooped there patiently with me for a long moment before he finally asked.  “What?”

He’d never seen one – they were rare, almost a myth.  I explained quickly.  Then I crept out, slowly at first, testing when they would react to our presence.  Nothing.  I looked up behind me at the balcony, and nothing threatening was there, either.  Finally I relaxed and waved for Othrelos to come into the room.  He passed me and approached the gate, investigated it.

“No good,” he said.  “It must open by – yes, I see a switch up there.”  He gestured up toward the faint blue light above us and to the left, where one arm of the balcony met the wall that held the gate.  But the stairs up to it were ruined.

“Heft me up,” I said, and we assumed our positions.  We’d done similarly a number of times before, climbing into windows.  I stepped onto his waiting entwined hands, and he shoved upward as I jumped.  I looked back down at Othrelos for a second.  “Hmm.  Think this was the jump he was worried about?”

“It could have been, if he’d been expecting you to be by yourself.  Try the switch.”

I did, and nothing happened.  We both looked around, and realized there was another switch at the opposite end of the room, also up on the balcony level.  I trotted casually around to it and hit it as well.  There was the clank of the gate starting to open – and another sound too, a sinister hum.  I recognized it even before I could turn to see the dark red glow spark to life.  “Run!” I shouted.

Lightning hit the spot where Othrelos had been, but he was sprinting for the gate.  I jumped down and followed, and heard the second blast behind me.  Othrelos hit the door before I did, and managed to throw it open before I ran headlong into him.  We kept running down the new hall for a bit before we stopped to realize we were out of range.

“I hate those,” I panted.

Something between a gasp and a snicker.  “Can’t imagine why.”

It had been silly to think of the last room as large:  the one we entered now was so enormous that I could imagine building a village in it, like the massive caverns where I’d found Othrelos.  An immense statue stood, raised and very prominent, at the opposite end from where we were.  There were balconies, of course.  Refreshingly, there were some of the benign Welkynd stones we’d been hoping for.  There were also zombies.

We went through a long, messy process of killing undead things, looking for doors, finding them locked, looking for switches and pressure plates, finding that they opened things a world away from where they were, killing more undead things.  It began to seem ridiculous.

“I may go a step further,” Othrelos said when we stopped to catch our breath, “and hate Ayleids.”

I chuckled.  “Really?  Just now?  Not for, you know, the centuries of slavery?”

He grinned playfully.  “I’m a mer.  They never enslaved _us._ ”

Our last switch had actually moved walls back in the main room, letting us up onto a platform that faced the great statue.  As we stepped onto it, we heard the low rumble that meant it was one huge pressure plate.  The statue opposite us slowly turned, and a hatch opened in its belly.

“That’s got to be your shot,” I said.  Such a small target from this distance.  It was definitely a good thing Othrelos had come with me.

He nodded, staring at the opening intently.  He drew a regular arrow, fitted it to the bow, fired a test shot to measure the distance.  It clattered to earth near the feet of the statue, and he nodded again.  Next he drew the arrow to which the Gray Fox had fitted the key-shaped point, and aimed it with more care.  I stood and watched, trying not to move or even breathe for fear of disturbing his concentration.

The arrow flew, and seemed to hang in the air forever before we heard the distant clink of metal on metal.  The statue itself lifted up, and there was a stairway leading beneath it.

Othrelos grabbed me to him and kissed me, his lips soft despite the tension in his arms.  “It’s all you from here,” he whispered.  “We can’t both be Celia.”

“You’ll be all right going back?”

He nodded.  “I know where all my hazards are.  I’ll meet you back at the house.  Shadow hide you, Lum.”

I kissed him back one more time, and all the adoration mixed with all the eagerness to go forward made me feel wonderfully alive.  I ran from him toward my secret door, and didn’t think twice until I heard his voice calling my name, far behind me.

I turned, and realized two things:  that my route to the stairs was flanked by two smaller statues, and that those were moving now, toward me.  As I reached for my sword Othrelos was running and shooting at the same time, trying to reach us.  The fight did not do us lasting harm, but we did have to split the last healing potion, and then kiss each other a few more times, before I could proceed again.

Now it would all be about sneaking and chameleon spells.  I was on much surer ground with that than with crawling through dungeons and killing monsters.  And that was for the best, because my safe, secret way opened out into a _barracks._   Happily I’d already started to move with stealth in mind, and there was a shift change underway, which stirred up a bit of chaos in which it was easier to get lost.  I followed the new shift out into the hallway.

Down the hall away from the guards, to a locked door.  I didn’t sense anyone on the other side, but one of the guards moving away from me started to head back.  I picked the lock as quickly as I could, slipped through, and quietly closed the door again behind me.  Then waited for several seconds to see if the returning guard came as far as the door, if he suspected something wrong.  Nothing.

A long, slow creep to a second door, a second lock to pick.  The next hall was curved:  I went around to the left, and found a door that would not respond to lockpicks.  It was locked some other way, perhaps with a switch.  I was close to something important.  I moved slowly back the other way, looking for the answer.  Back around to where I’d started, and then down the right arm of the curved hall, with an abrupt stop when I realized there was someone there.

He was dressed like the blind priests.  Yes, I remembered:  the order of priests blinded by reading the Elder Scrolls.  This had to be the place I wanted, which made it all the more pleasing to see the switch behind him.  I took a few very deep, quick breaths, then one more deep one that I held while I moved past the priest, hit the switch, and moved away again, so that he would not hear my breathing.

The door was open.  Inside was the library itself, and its blind priests.  I glanced at their eyes quickly to make sure they showed no glimmer of ability to read faces, and then stopped sneaking and walked casually toward the table where they waited.  “Celia,” one of them said, and with no other preliminaries, another produced the Scroll.  Then they left me, presumably to let me read.

Just like that.  I picked it up and stood for a moment with it in my hands.  An Elder Scroll.  Now all I had to do was get back out.  I got up, careful not to make noise, so as not to let them think I was done and ready to give the Scroll back.  Back the way I came?  Ah, no:  that door had locked again, still unpickable.  They were not prepared to _let_ me out until I returned the Scroll.  That realization was oddly delightful.  Immortal fame should not come easily, after all.

There were no other doors I could see, but there was a flight of stairs.  I tried that, and found that up the stairs were more blind priests.  But I’d had practice for this, and I moved through them, slowly and quietly, until I reached the door on the far side.  Still no safe way to go back down, so I kept going up.  Up led me into still more priests – their private quarters, I gathered.  Past that was a rather more lavish apartment that must belong to someone important.

No obvious way out of here either, other than the way I’d come.  Curse it, there must be – but I didn’t have time to think about it, because I could hear someone coming behind me.  There was nowhere, there was nothing to – there was a fireplace.  An enormous fireplace, and when I hurried to it wondering if I could conceal myself behind its screen, I saw that the grate was loose and the flue wide.

A woman behind, me, I could tell by the voice.  A mage, I could tell by the sound of magicka gathering for a blast.  I jumped.

I seemed to fall for hours.  It was plenty of time to wonder how many stories I was going to drop, and how hurt I would be when the ground and I were reunited.  Strangely, I couldn’t quite tell whether I was having the time of my life or feeling terrified that I was about to die.

I didn’t.  I hit the ground and felt a strange cushioning beneath my feet.  I struggled to land straight, to not fall forward or backward onto my hands.  As I crouched down close to the earth, Springheel Jak’s boots came apart at the seams and collapsed in ancient leather puddles around my feet.

Ah.  _That_ was the jump he had been worried about.

Around me were the crumbling Ayleid walls of the Old Way.  I was as good as out.

Me and an Elder Scroll.

 

 


	15. Eyes of a Tragedy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All the secrets of the Cowl are revealed in the court of Millona Umbranox.

Of course, I did have to make another long, foul-smelling, moist trip through the sewers, but that was a minor detail.  I climbed up into dusk, which was a surprise, and headed toward O’s house.  I was about halfway there when I started to feel how exhausted I was.

O met me right at the door and grabbed me to him.  I hugged him, tired but cheerful, and looked over his shoulder at where the Gray Fox was standing.

“I won’t be doing likewise,” he said dryly.  “The smell.”

“Oh, I think you’re going to change your mind.”  With a dramatic flourish I produced the Elder Scroll. 

His eyes lit up, and I thought he did reconsider for just a second before he reached out and took the document from my hand, reverently.  “You really did it,” he breathed.

“Of course.”

He stared at it in his hands, motionless.  “Now,” he said at last.  “Now I must have a little time.”  He finally looked back up at me again.  “You should bathe and get some sleep.  By the time you wake up I should know for sure.”

I was too tired to press for more information.  By the time I had sponged myself clean in the little washroom I was barely conscious.  Othrelos led me to his old room and laid me down in his bed, and I fell asleep in his arms.

As soon as I was half-awake again, I thought of my favorite childhood story and started giggling.  When Othrelos stirred to roll toward me, his eyes opening, I mumbled, “I really did it.  I purloined a shadow.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”  It was morning; light was coming in through the window.  Now that I was neither filthy nor exhausted, I realized that I was famished.  “I don’t suppose you have any idea what Mom’s got around by way of food.”

He smiled.   “I did get here before you did, you know.  There’s enough.”

I was no sooner down the stairs than the Gray Fox did embrace me, hard.  “It’s there.  With the Stone I could read it.  It’s there.”

“Good,” I said.  “What’s there?”

He snickered.  “Patience.  You’re going to have to learn patience if you’re going to run the Guild.”  He stepped back a pace from me to give me a serious look.  “But first I have one more small errand for you.  Minor for you, compared to what you’ve done, but rather important for me.”

He reached into a pouch on his belt and pulled out a ring, then placed it gently in my hand.  As I raised my eyebrows he said softly, “You must take this to her and see… see what her reaction is.  It may be anger, or tears.  I have to know.”

Millona.  Of course.  I nodded, full of nerves and sadness on his behalf.  “What do I say to her?”

“Only that it is from a stranger.  Only that, at first.  See what she says.”  He saw the way I was looking at him, and cleared his throat.  “Well, go, then.  Move it along.”

With that, he shooed us out of Othrelos’s house, and we went along without a question.  And without breakfast, which we had to get in Weye on our way out of town.

We didn’t discuss the ring as we traveled down to Anvil.  Othrelos didn’t seem to think it was any of his business.  He’d always had what I considered an amazing lack of curiosity for a thief – but then again, as someone who’d lived so long with his own little secrets, maybe he’d decided that some things were better left alone.  He did, however, pursue the hint the Gray Fox had dropped about _if I was going to run the Guild._

“He’s going to retire,” he said.  “He’s going to make you the Gray Fox.”

“Do you think so?” I asked, but I already knew it was true.  I knew, as Othrelos didn’t yet, that the Gray Fox had lived under a curse for ten years, that he’d come to regard the title as a burden rather than an honor.  I supposed it was only kindness that had made him wait this long to retire, to wait until there was a way to lift the curse – well, that, or the desire to lift it off of himself, so that he could build a life in retirement that promised him something better than total anonymity.

A life with Millona, if he could.  And to that purpose I was to take her the ring.  How exactly was this supposed to work out?  It wasn’t a proposal, surely.  Not this way, not “from a stranger.”  Some reminder of who he had been?

The day we reached Anvil was sunny, and there was a breeze off of the sea that I had barely remembered how much I loved until I smelled it.  The scent did not reach into the closed-off castle, where the elements had been conquered by masonry and lace.

Countess Umbranox’s steward was less than pleased to see me again, but the Countess herself rose with the pleasant, polite blandness of a woman who hated no one because her heart was elsewhere anyway.

I dropped to my knees.  It seemed proper at the time.  “Countess, I have another message for you.  A delivery, really.”  I brought out the ring and held it up for her.

She moved idly forward, glanced down at it.  Then bent over it more intently, staring, then reached out to touch it – not to take it, yet.  She studied it very carefully in my hand before she took it into hers, face stern and growing pale.  _Now_ I had her full attention.  There was something like horror in her eyes, and her voice quaked a little when she spoke.  “This is my husband’s ring.  Where did you get it?”

Oh, gods.  A test of whether she was still mourning her husband.  And _me_ the one who had to watch it play out if she was.  My mouth was dry.  “A stranger.”

She hoisted me up to my feet, and there was a kind of furious grief in her face, and I thought she might strike me.  “Where did you _get_ it?” she cried.

“From me, Countess,” said a voice behind me.  “Please allow me to explain.”

She released me, and I turned my head to look back toward the voice.  A man who had been sitting in the back of the audience hall was approaching us.  A man with piercing gray eyes.

Eyes I’d seen before.  I was sure I had.

“Explain then,” she said, her voice cold.  “Now, and quickly.”

“I know how important the answer is to you,” he responded softly.  “Forgive me, but you will not understand it unless I tell the whole tale.”  He paused, cleared his throat uncomfortably.

Was it – oh Shadow take us both, what if it was?  Did he really think such a cruel introduction was going to win her over?  But it was too late to stop him.

“Centuries ago, a thief stole the sacred cowl of Nocturnal herself.  She retaliated by cursing it.  Whoever possessed it, from the thief onward into eternity, would have his identity forever erased, and would live only as the Gray Fox.  He would be forgotten by every friend and loved one, removed from every record.  Every record but one, the one that can never be erased.”  He raised his voice and declared the last boldly.  “The thief’s name was Emer Dereloth.”

Something ripped open in my head.  I knew that name:  I had always known it.  I had known it since I was seven, since the first time I’d read _Purloined Shadows_ and seen him hailed as the greatest thief who had ever been.  His name still belonged to the house where the Guild was headquartered in the Imperial City.  Dereloth’s house was the home of all thieves.  I _knew._

The man started to list other names, and I knew them as he said them, like I’d known the first.  I’d memorized them, learned their stories, the things they had done to win their titles:  the list had been passed down from each Gray Fox to the next, our lineage, our heritage, our family.

He hesitated, held something forward in his hand as he said the last in the litany of names, and I recognized it as the Gray Fox’s cowl.  The last name almost shattered the room.

“Corvus Umbranox.”

That was the last sound for a long moment.  He watched her – Corvus, the Gray Fox – with more fear than I would have thought could exist in him.  When I could no longer bear how vulnerable he looked, I turned to look at her.  If she had been any paler, I would have seen through her.  She held herself very still, very tight, but I could see her hands trembling.

“I thought you were dead,” she choked out at last.  “Ten years, Corvus.  Why did you never – ”  She stopped short as she realized why.

“You have no idea how many times I have tried to tell you,” he said.  “You could not hear it.”

For just a second relief bloomed across her face, and she was like sunlight:  any fool would have loved her.  She took two steps toward him, bright and eager.  “Corvus!  You’re – ”  And then she stopped again, and thought, and the light was gone.  “You’re the Gray Fox.”  When silence was her answer, she went even darker, pained, and the tears he had been fearing finally surfaced.  “The Gray Fox cannot be the Count of Anvil.  I – I am the Countess, I must – ”  She turned her face away from him as she struggled to keep speaking.  “I will call the guards.  I mean it.”

“I will resign!”  he cried.  “I will resign right now.  I will never be the Gray Fox again.”  When she looked at him again, he strode quickly to me, thrusting the cowl forward in offer.  “Take it.  You are the Gray Fox and the master of the Thieves’ Guild.”  He grimaced a little at my hesitation, and added more quietly, “With my thanks.  Take it.  The curse should be gone.”

_Should_ be.  But I took it anyway.

“There,” he said.  “I am done with that forever.  I will be the Count and husband I should always have been.”  He threw himself at her feet.  “Whatever you want of me, Millona.  But please take me back.”

She was shaking.  When she spoke, it was to me.  “I suppose my husband is in your debt.  All the same, you are a criminal standing in audience with the Countess.  I suggest you go.  I do not wish to see you again.”

I smiled politely.  “You won’t.”

She nodded, looked down at Corvus.  Then she fell to her knees to meet him on the floor, and instantly they were wrapped around each other, her sobbing into his shoulder.

It seemed best to leave quietly.  I walked away, still looking down with some perplexity at the Cowl in my hands, and listening to the reunion unfolding behind me.

“Corvus.”

“Say it again.”

_“Corvus.”_

 


	16. There is a House

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luminara settles into her new job, and a bit more reluctantly, tests the Cowl to see whether the curse is really gone.

There was much to be done in the coming weeks.  I would travel with Othrelos to the Imperial City, to lay my claim on Dareloth’s house, and on the pleasant apartment maintained for the Guildmaster on its top floor.  Fathis would develop from pleasant to almost worshipful, willing to go to almost any lengths to please me.  On my say, that also meant going to great lengths to please Othrelos.

I would “promote” Amusei to steward of the house, a job where he could feel important to the Guild but get into little trouble.  I would consolidate piracy into the Guild, to the profit of everyone involved.  Eventually, I would also discover that Mazoga really didn’t harbor a grudge against thieves in general after all, and once she knew the truth about me, she would end up employed as my personal bodyguard.  Out of friendship, she said, because with her that trumped everything.

Family is what you make of it.

First, though, I brought the cowl back to Othrelos and his Anvil house.

It was lovely now, even better than Velwyn had promised.  Perfectly clean, and refurnished with tastefully expensive things.  Much easier to see now how spacious and lovely the house actually was, with balconies overlooking the heart of the city.

I held up the cowl between me and Othrelos, and it eliminated the thought of asking about anything else.

He knew about the curse:  I could see it in his face.  It was another of the things we all knew now.  It was one of the great legends within the Thieves’ Guild, how the cowl of the Gray Fox had once been under a curse, and how Corvus and I had broken it.

“It’s mine,” I said.  “I haven’t put it on yet.”

He nodded and looked sympathetic.  “Are you scared?”

I didn’t want to say it.  “A little.  I don’t – I don’t want to put it on and lose you.  And lose everything.”

He stepped in and touched my arms.  “Say his name.”

“Corvus Umbranox.”

He smiled encouragingly.  “There, you see.  It should be fine.”

“There’s that _should be_ again.  I don’t like it.”  I sighed.  “But I suppose I should find out for sure.”  I glanced into his eyes.  “Love you, O.”

“Love you, Lum.  It’ll be all right.”

“I hope so.”  I pulled the gray leather and fabric over my head and looked for the first time through the eyeholes.  I could feel the magicka humming around my face as I looked around the room.  I felt very sharp, very aware.  Very _light_ , as if I could carry half again my own weight on my back.  Good for a big take, I imagined.

“Well?”  I said at last.

Othrelos blinked at me.  “Well what?”

My heart skipped.  “Who am I?”

“You’re the Gray Fox.” 

I thought my chest might explode, but luckily I noticed the glimmer in his eye, and he the daggers in mine, and he relented.  “Luminara Flavius.”

“Ugh.”  I relaxed into his arms.  “That was really awful of you, you know.”

“I’m sorry.  It was too obvious not to.”  He gave me a squeeze.  “Now that that’s out of the way, how do you like our house?”

“It’s lovely.”  Then I actually thought about what he’d said.  “Ours, is it?”

He nuzzled up under the cowl and kissed my neck.  “I’m asking.”

Funny how my neck seemed to able to send tremors through the rest of my body.  “I suppose it could be our house,” I purred.  “If you wouldn’t rather move into my little ship’s cabin in a cave.”

“With your pirates?” he smiled against my throat.  “I’d rather not.  More privacy here, and more room.”

“Suppose you’re right.  Then I suppose we live here.”  I brought my lips to meet his.

That was the last time we talked about the cowl, the Guild, or pirates for days.

 


	17. Epilogue: Not Quite Retired

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Corvus and Millona play a little game to knock the dust off of their relationship. (sex chapter)

It hadn’t been too long after all:  he was able to scale the wall and reach the ledge outside Millona’s window without any great difficulty.

In fact, now that he stopped to think about it, it had been rather _too_ easy, even with all those guards he’d managed to surreptitiously hire.  All that time he’d been gone, any fool with a little ambition could have – well.  Never mind _that._   He was back now.  He took a moment to adjust the gray scarf into the half-mask he’d worn far back in his misspent youth, before the ingenious but unfortunate acquisition of the _cowl._   Never mind that, too: it was long gone, handed down to his successor.  Good riddance to it.

But here he was anyway, in his old mask, out on the ledge.  He’d promised.  Hopefully it would be worth the trouble.  He stepped into the window and sat there in the windowsill, obscured by his distance from the lights in the far corners.  She was in the next room, fussing with something or other on the desk.  He watched her from the shadows as she left that fidget and came toward the bedroom to start some new one.  So lovely: even this short distance was painful –

_Patience, now.  You waited for ten years.  Wait ten more minutes._

“Good evening, Countess.”

She gasped, genuinely startled, and spun to face him.  Then her face brightened, remembering.  She brought her delicate hands up to her mouth.  “Oh!  Who are you?”

“You’ve no idea?  Really?”

“Oh.  You’re…you’re the Gray Fox.”  Her hands were still at her mouth, and she was _giggling._

Well, the point of the thing had been to break the awkwardness between them, and giggling was a start.  Actually it was a delightful sound, and it was an effort for him not to respond in kind.  “Now, Countess,” he admonished her.  “You should not be _laughing._ ”

She could barely help herself.  She struggled to regain her composure.  “No…no….”

He unsheathed his sword and raised it casually toward her.  “No,” he echoed quietly.

The giggling stopped.  “Oh!”  Her cheeks flushed a little, and her sweet eyes danced as she watched him.  “You won’t get away with this.  The guards will come.”

He snorted.  “I think they won’t.  They’re not really very good.  You should probably fire most of them.”

She spoke more softly now, her eyes shifting gently up and down between meeting his gaze and watching the tip of the sword.  “What do you want?”  They let silence hang between them for a moment.  “Money, I suppose.”

He smiled.  “No.  This isn’t a robbery.  Although,” he added, as casually as he could, “since you mention it, you might as well take off that necklace and leave it on the dresser for me.  The earrings too.”   He watched her unclasp the string of jewels around her neck, leaving her white throat bare. 

“And take down your hair,” he said.  She raised her eyebrows at him.  “Tsk.  The barrettes, the hairpins.  I know you have expensive ones.”

“Ah,” she breathed, and reached up to loosen her braids.  Down they came in the waves he remembered, brown streaked with gold.  (Perhaps one or two of the gold strands were gray now, but what difference did that make?)  She shook them out to full glory, in a gesture quite unnecessary to the story but beautifully considerate.

He looked her over, falsely cool, regarding the blue satin and white lace that still divided them.  “That’s a lovely dress.  I’ll take that too.”

She made a dramatic gasp and threw her arms across her chest in modesty.  “You will not!  You will not dishonor your Countess!”

He stood up from the windowsill and raised the tip of the sword higher, toward the base of her throat, stepping forward to join her in the light.  “My Lady,” he whispered, “you will really be happier if you follow my instructions.”

The corners of her pouty lips quirked upward for just a second, and then she forced them back down.  Her hands slowly traced up her center line to the ties of the gown, trembling just slightly as she started to untie them.

His heart should not be in his throat.  He was supposed to be the criminal.

She peeled the fabric away and stood in pale glory for him to compare to years of forlorn memory:  hips a little more slender than he’d recalled above soft white thighs, but breasts even more wondrously full, rose-nippled.

She was so preposterously beautiful, and he had taken as much punishment as he could bear.  Losing the will to even pretend to threaten her, he lowered the sword.  “By the Nine,” he sighed, “Millona.”  He crossed the space between them in two long strides and grabbed her head with his left hand to draw her mouth to his.

She whimpered, folded gently into his kiss, her arms still bent between them.  The sword clattered to the ground as he brought his other hand up behind her, caressing her round ass and pulling her closer.  He ran both hands up and down her sides, drinking in the wonderful smoothness of her skin, relearning every curve of her shape.  Her fingers moved delicately beneath his collar to trace his chest, making every nerve dance.  Then her fingers curled, and she raked him ever so gently with her nails.  He threw the shirt off like the hateful impediment it was and clutched her tight.

But she faltered, pulled her face back from his, gasped for air.  “No,” she whispered.  “No, you mustn’t.”

Ah yes, this was the problem he had worried about.  Was this still part of the game or not?  A token protest or a real change of heart?  He’d feared that she might reconsider – actually, at first, he’d feared that she only suggested the game at all to tease him.  His breath was uneven from the collision of desire and anxiety.  “Mustn’t I?”

Her head was against his chest where he could not read her face.  Her voice was barely audible.  “No.  I am the Countess.”

That was no help:  it could be taken either way.  He swallowed his fear, decided to press just a little further, to see if the resistance grew or melted away.   “Ssh,” he breathed into her ear, stroking the side of her face with the tips of his fingers.  “I won’t tell anyone you let me touch you.  I have no one to tell.”  Because all of that, too, was true either way.

She trembled but did not back away from his touch.  He pressed his lips lightly to the side of her neck as his hand descended, found the curls of her pubic hair – found her lips already parted and quite wet.  She _was_ still playing the game, and she was enjoying it very much.

He concealed his relieved grin with a nip at the base of her throat.  _You minx.  And downstairs you have been so adamant in your disapproval._   It gave him the courage to voice the last of his fears, still half in the context of the play.

“You pretend to be so proper,” he whispered.  “You pretend to hate me and everything that I stand for.  But you don’t really hate me at all, do you, Countess?”

She was shaking.  She lifted her eyes only partway, as far as his mouth, her lids heavy.  “No,” she said at last, in a whimper.  “I don’t.  I can’t.  I never hated you, Corv – ”

He silenced her tongue with his.  There it was, the end of pretense between them.  There was every joy he had lost given back to him.  All but the one, and that was only waiting for him to claim it.  As quickly as he could he kicked away boots and trousers and then swept her up in his arms, carried her to the bed (ignoring the twinge in his back that pleaded with him not to do this very often), threw her down.  She let out a joyous laugh as he descended on her; as he teased one of her pink nipples with his tongue she embraced him to hold him there.

“Mr. Fox?” she said.

He stopped to look up at her, grinned at her silliness and her mischievous smile.  “Yes, Countess?”

“You should probably hold me down.  In case I struggle to get away.”

He laughed helplessly and took hold of her wrists.  “Like that?”

“Mmm, yes.”  She pushed up playfully against him.  “Just like that.  And kiss me.”

“You’re awfully demanding for a captive,” he teased her, but kissed her anyway as he parted her legs with one knee, as she writhed eagerly beneath him.  He entered her slowly, deliberately, and she growled in protest, biting at his lips.  He didn’t care.  He was lost in sensation, and a few bites only added interest.  Inside she was silk and starlight and – and no, this speed wasn’t going to be enough for him, either.  He thrust harder, at a pace she liked better.  She wriggled, making her breasts shake wonderfully, and struggled against his restraint in a way that was hardly convincing, given that she had wrapped her legs around him.

This wasn’t enough either.  There was no such thing as enough.  He released her wrists so that he could take hold of her hips and drive himself deeper:  she shook and moaned and threw her arms up around his neck.  She pulled him in tight, soft breasts and belly pressed against him, every ounce of flesh made his.  He came with a rush of pent-up emotion that threatened to bring tears to his eyes, and this he concealed with more gentle kisses to the side of her neck.

She sighed for him and traced her fingers up and down his back for a moment; and then suddenly, she brought them up to his face, tugged, and brandished the gray mask above his head, giggling.

He’d quite forgotten about the mask.  “Oh my,” he said, with quiet menace.  “Countess.  You’ve seen my face.  I’m afraid that complicates things.  I won’t be able to leave you.”

“Then stay,” she beamed.  “I shall make you the Count of Anvil.”

She was really too delightful.  “Are you sure you want to make someone like me the Count of Anvil?”

“Yes.”  She gave him another kiss, still laughing.  All the tension and doubt there had been between them was gone, and it was almost as though he had never lost her.

“Well, then.”  He gazed into her shining eyes.  “Then I’ll stay, Millona.”  He kissed her long and slow before he looked up again to where she was still dangling the mask above them.  “So can I get rid of the thing now?”

“Oh, certainly not!  Next time, I’m going to wear it.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally a stand-alone story, and in fact the first Oblivion fanfic I wrote.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to Twist Shimmy for beta


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